The Ritchie Boys: The Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned to Fight Hitler

Günther’s father had contacted a Jewish organization in Hanover, which was helping plan his emigration. An affiliated group based in New York, German Jewish Children’s Aid, was taking small groups of Jewish children out of Nazi Germany. Günther would be joining one of these groups. The organization would pay for his ocean passage, provide a chaperon, and make sure he reached his aunt and uncle in St. Louis safely. The group had already sent a social worker to interview Benno and Ethel Silberberg; the social worker, according to her report, had found them to be “kindly, wholesome people” eager to welcome their nephew into their home.

The prospect of leaving without his parents, his brother, and his little sister saddened Günther deeply. Other than visits to his grandparents and his bicycling trip, he had never been away from home for any length of time. Going to America was an opportunity to leave behind the upheaval, suppression, and violence consuming Germany, and visions from Herr Tittel’s colorful stories about America—the land of the free, of baseball and Hollywood movies and pizza!—danced in his mind. Yet, even as he began to dream of these things for himself, Günther was apprehensive about leaving the rest of his family behind. How and when would they reunite?

In early October 1937, Günther stood before a U.S. official who, unbeknownst to the youth, held his future if not his life in his bearlike hands. Vice Consul General Malcolm C. Burke, an impressive, barrel-chested man of fifty, had been in charge of administering immigration laws and regulations in Hamburg since 1924. Günther was lucky that his visa application had been assigned to Burke. Many other U.S. consuls, quick to find sworn affidavits inadequate, routinely denied visa requests. For example, in 1933, seventy-four German refugees had applied to the U.S. consulate in Rotterdam, but only sixteen visas were granted. All but one of the fifty-eight refusals were based primarily on the grounds that the would-be immigrants were likely to become public charges.

For a long time, Burke had been an outspoken critic of inconsistent interpretations of U.S. immigration law. Beyond that, he was a strong believer in having the resources of the friends and relatives who signed the affidavits investigated in the United States, at the place where their assets were located and their income earned, rather than by overseas officials making arbitrary judgment calls. Günther had another advantage in being assigned to Burke: unlike some of his less compassionate, even anti-Semitic colleagues in the U.S. State Department at home and abroad, Burke recognized that Jews were being persecuted by the Nazis and was willing to look for loopholes in the laws and regulations that would allow them to enter America.

Burke had in front of him Günther’s paperwork, including the affidavit signed by Benno Silverberg. The bank balance on the document had been swelled by short-term loans from coworkers and friends, whom Benno had repaid a week after receiving his bank statement. Burke had enough experience reviewing affidavits and financial statements to know when they’d been fudged, but if he harbored any suspicions about the St. Louis baker’s sizable bank balance, he did not raise them officially or voice them to Günther. He asked the boy, in German, for his full name, date of birth, and years of schooling. Then, inexplicably, he asked, “What is the sum of forty-eight plus fifty-two?”

“Einhundert,” Günther responded.

With that simple bit of mathematics, the consul stamped and signed Günther’s Jugendausweis (youth card). Günther Stern had been accepted by the U.S. State Department for entry into America.

Now that he had an approved visa, things moved quickly. Within a couple of weeks, the Sterns received word from the Jewish organization that they had a group of children leaving Germany on a ship to the United States in November, and that Günther could join them.

In late October, Günther’s friends gathered in the Sterns’ apartment for a boisterous farewell party. The event added to his growing excitement—and yet, the whispers of fear remained. Not a single non-Jew attended, not even Günther’s longtime classmate and one of his few remaining non-Jewish friends, Gerhard Ebeling. This fact did not escape Günther’s attention.

Gerhard, a gentile, couldn’t openly criticize the mistreatment of his Jewish classmates by pro-Nazi teachers and students. However, he would occasionally say something quietly to Günther about staying strong during these difficult times. Further complicating matters, Gerhard’s father was a customs official, the type of government job generally reserved in those days for Nazi Party members.

Customs officer Ebeling did something unusual the week before Günther was to depart, however. At that time, anyone preparing to leave the country had to show up in advance at the customs house to have his or her baggage inspected and sealed. Now Herr Ebeling telephoned Julius and offered to come to their apartment, saving the Sterns the labor of bringing in the heavy steamer trunk packed with clothes and family memorabilia Hedwig wanted to get out of Germany. That afternoon, Ebeling placed the official seal on the trunk without looking inside and wished Günther safe travels. In normal times, this would be a small gesture by a friendly official, but these were not normal times.

Günther Stern’s youth travel document, bearing two Third Reich stamps with swastikas, which he used to emigrate to America. (Family photograph)

On October 27, 1937, Günther and his parents—Hedwig and Julius had arranged for someone to stay with the two younger children, both of whom cried brokenheartedly when Günther left—went to the Hildesheim railway station and boarded a northbound train for Bremerhaven. One of Germany’s most vital ports, Bremerhaven had become a hub of emigration from Europe.

After a daylong train trip, the Sterns arrived in the late afternoon and checked into a boardinghouse. Early the next morning, Günther and his parents met at a designated spot on the pier with the other children, their parents, and the chaperon from the Jewish organization. Looming above them was the ocean liner that would take the children to America, the SS Hamburg, a steamship nearly seven hundred feet long that could make a speedy twenty knots at sea. They could clearly see the large German flag flying high above its bridge.

It was time to say good-bye. Günther’s mother was weeping and dabbing her eyes with a hankie. They hugged and kissed. Determined not to feel helpless and hoping to make his mother a little less sad, Günther promised ardently to do everything he could to find someone in America to sponsor them. They would be reunited in America, he vowed, no matter what.

Hedwig nodded as she fought back more tears.

Günther turned to his father, who gave him a hug and a firm handshake. Throughout the Nazi years, Julius had hammered home the need for Günther to remain inconspicuous, to keep unwanted attention from being drawn to him. “You have to be like invisible ink,” he had cautioned many times. “You will leave traces of your existence when, in better times, the invisible ink becomes visible again.”

For several weeks, as his beloved son’s date of departure drew closer, his concerned father had imparted such pieces of wisdom and a litany of instructions. Now, as he draped his arm over his son’s shoulders and drew him close, he had a final word of advice. Speaking softly, so none of the others could overhear, he reminded his son that he would be on a German flagship. He would not leave Third Reich territory until he set foot in America.

The last words his father spoke to him were familiar ones.

“Remember, Günther, be like invisible ink.”

Manfred Steinfeld was born in 1924, between two world wars, in the town of Josbach, located in the very heart of Germany. He would carry with him just two vivid memories of his father, Abraham, both from before he was five years old.

He remembered sitting next to his father, who wore a white robe over his clothes, and watching him as he prayed at synagogue on Yom Kippur.

And he remembered overhearing his father and his uncle Solomon discussing der Krieg (the war). At the time, the little boy didn’t understand much of what they said. Years later, Manfred learned that they had been talking about World War I, and that the Steinfeld brothers had fought in a far-off place called Macedonia, where Solomon won the Iron Cross for battlefield bravery. And that their younger brother, Isador, had been killed in the Battle of Verdun in France in 1916; growing up, Manfred had often wondered about the uncle he never knew whose name was engraved on the town’s stone war memorial.1

A short time later, Manfred lost his father. Abraham died of pneumonia at age forty-four, leaving his wife, Paula, with their three children—Irma, six; Manfred, five; and Herbert, three. She took over her husband’s dry goods store, which was the family’s only means of support. They were already living in the house of her mother-in-law, Johanna Hanschen Steinfeld, who helped Paula take care of the children.

Josbach was a town of 419 residents, just sixty miles from Frankfurt, one of Germany’s largest cities, but a world apart. Most of Josbach’s citizens were subsistence farmers, working the land with plows pushed by hand or pulled by cows or oxen; few could afford horses for the task. No one had tractors or other farm machinery, and there was only one automobile in town. The wealth of a German farmer could be measured by the size of his manure pile, which was indicative not only of how much livestock he owned, but also of how much fertilizer he had available to spread on his fields.

There were only six Jewish families in Josbach: three Steinfelds, two Kattens (Paula’s kin), and one Fain. Abraham’s and Paula’s ancestors had settled there in the early 1800s, and by the 1920s, the only retail business not Jewish owned was the tavern. In addition to the Steinfeld store, which sold shoes as well as material and ribbon for home dressmakers, there was a hardware store, a livestock trader, and a confectionery shop. The tradesmen—the town’s carpenter, painter, shoemaker, and tailor—were all gentiles. This collection of businesses and trades provided the townsfolk with all of their basic needs.

Manfred’s childhood home was located next to the town well, and it was the only house in Josbach with running water, thanks to Abraham’s ingenuity: in the 1920s, Manfred’s father had run a pipe the short distance from the water pump to their house. The first floor had a living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms, one of which Manfred shared with his grandmother. There was a third bedroom on the second floor. A root cellar was used to store potatoes, turnips, and other vegetables from the garden during the winter months. During the summer harvest, Paula canned fruits and vegetables, stocking the pantry. She went to the community bake house on Friday mornings, which by town tradition were reserved for the Jewish women to make challah and cakes for Shabbat.

For Manfred, the absence of his father was filled by his extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, and especially his grandmother, with whom he was especially close. She loved helping him with his homework and was overjoyed the day he came home and announced he was the best student in his class and the first to know all his multiplication tables.

“The teacher says I’ll probably be a finance minister when I grow up,” Manfred reported.

Serious minded and hardworking at an age when many boys were not, Manfred seemed older than his years. He had a classically proportioned face, twice as long as it was wide, and symmetrical features, making him look mature for his age. A willing harvester of apples and plums for his mother’s canning, he earned his first money picking and selling blueberries by the basket. He also made deliveries on his bicycle to his mother’s customers in surrounding towns.

Education for the children of Josbach took place in a two-room schoolhouse, with grades one through four in one room and five through eight in the adjacent room. Out of seventy students, ten were Jews. There was only one teacher, who went back and forth between the two classrooms. Although Josbach had its own synagogue, they were one Jewish male shy of the minyan required to hold communal worship. Worshippers walked two or three miles to the synagogue in Halsdorf for weekly services instead. Occasionally, arrangements were made for a tenth man to come to Josbach from another town so local services could be held for bar mitzvahs and High Holidays.

When Manfred was nine, his grandmother became ill. After several days, a physician was summoned. Manfred waited anxiously with the rest of the family for the arrival of Dr. Heinrich Hesse from Rauschenberg, eight miles away. It had been snowing all day, and the doctor finally showed up in late afternoon. He examined Johanna and left some medication for her chest congestion. What Manfred would never forget about this day had to do with what the doctor told them as he was putting on his overcoat to leave.

The date was January 30, 1933. With a cheerful lilt in his voice, Dr. Hesse announced, “Something wonderful has happened today. Adolf Hitler has been made the new chancellor!”

The changes wrought by this news came more slowly to isolated hamlets like Josbach—in those days in Germany, there was a little village every few miles. But it was only a matter of time before the quiet, rural town felt the brunt of Nazism. Manfred’s family first became aware of the anti-Semitic fervor sweeping the country during the twenty-four-hour boycott of Jewish businesses two months later on April 1, 1933. Even in neighborly Josbach, many customers observed the boycott and stayed away from the stores owned by Jews, although there were none of the demonstrations or outbreaks of violence that were so widespread in cities like Frankfurt and Berlin.

In November 1933, Germany held its first national election since Hitler had taken control of the government. All opposition parties had by then been banned, and voters were presented with a single slate of Nazi Party candidates. The voting was not by secret ballot, and in most locations, voters had to hand their ballots directly to party officials. Setting the tone for future elections during the Nazi era, voter intimidation was commonplace. Citizens were threatened with reprisals if they voted against Hitler, or even if they failed to vote. As a result, voter turnout was 95 percent, and the Nazi Party received nearly 40 million votes, some 92 percent of all those cast.

Manfred’s uncle Solomon went to the polls proudly wearing the Iron Cross he had earned fighting for Germany in the last war. Like so many other Jewish war veterans, Solomon, who owned the Josbach hardware store, believed that he would be protected against Nazi persecution because he had fought for the Fatherland. Like most German Jews, Solomon considered himself a German first and a Jew second. This feeling of security and a desire not to be ostracized led Solomon Steinfeld to vote for the Nazi slate. He was not alone; other Jews in Josbach, including Grandma Johanna, voted for the Nazi candidates, if only to avoid being identified as “no” votes.

In Josbach, it was local custom for Jewish families to gather each week—usually on Fridays after dinner or on Saturdays after lunch—to discuss topics of interest to them and their community. Most children would run around and play instead of paying attention to the grown-ups, but Manfred was fascinated by the adult conversations. One discussion he overheard had to do with Hitler and the Nazis. Most of the adults thought there was little future for the Nazis, and that Hitler and his party, for many years the minority, would not last long in power. Many chancellors and cabinets before them had lasted only a short time. Josbach had only one known Nazi in town, a man named Heinrich Haupt, who had joined the party in the 1920s.

A few of the adults were convinced, however, that the Nazis were a growing threat, and to bolster their argument, they pointed to surrounding towns, which were known to have more Nazis and had seen increased reports of persecution against Jews.

It took some time before Manfred sensed any divide between the Jewish and non-Jewish students at his school. But one day they were told that their teacher had retired. His replacement was a younger man from out of the area who preached Nazi doctrine. The appearance of this new teacher signaled a shift for Manfred and the other Jewish children. From that moment on, in the classroom and during recreational activities, the Jews were increasingly ridiculed by the teacher and bullied by their classmates.

The next summer, Manfred spent part of his vacation with his mother’s brother, Arthur Katten, and his wife, Lina, in nearby Rauschenberg. After befriending some neighborhood boys, Manfred was invited to attend a local meeting of a national organization, Deutsches Jungvolk, for boys aged ten to fourteen. Manfred was excited to hear that they would be participating in sports, camping, and hiking. However, the group was affiliated with the Hitler Youth movement, and when they learned that Manfred was a Jew, he was promptly excluded as being unfit.

Not long after Manfred returned home, the first of his family members was picked up by the Nazis. To his shock, it was his uncle Arthur. Arrested at home by uniformed storm troopers, his mother’s brother was held in “protective custody” for six weeks before he was released without any charges being filed. Arthur had honorably served his country in World War I, but he realized now that this meant nothing under the Nazi regime. He immediately began making plans to try to get himself and his family out of Germany as quickly as possible.

Anti-Semitism grew ever more prevalent in the daily life of Josbach, and the local Jews became convinced that the Nazi regime had entrenched its power, with Hitler in full control as the supreme leader of Germany. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were enacted, making Jews second-class citizens and revoking most of their political rights. Only Germans with four non-Jewish German grandparents were deemed “racially acceptable,” and Judaism was now defined as a race rather than a religion. It was irrelevant whether people practiced Judaism or were even practicing Christians; by law, if they possessed “Jewish blood,” they were Jews.

Guided by Third Reich dogma that encouraged “racially pure” women to bear as many Aryan children as possible, mixed marriages between Jews and persons with “German or related blood” were made a criminal offense. Hitler and his Nazi Party promulgated the notion that an enlarged, racially superior German population was destined to expand and rule by military force. One early step toward that goal—and the global conflict that would soon follow—took place in 1936, when Hitler sent German military forces to occupy the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone in western Germany established under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

In that same year, Manfred’s teacher, who kept a swastika pinned on the lapel of his jacket, herded all the students outside and lined them up like young military recruits along Josbach’s main street, where he told them a “special” motorcade was scheduled to pass through town. Some of the students eagerly pushed their way forward, but Manfred hung back. He had an idea it was going to be some Nazi-inspired demonstration, and he had no desire to be standing in front. Their wait wasn’t long. A black, open-roofed car approached at moderate speed. As they had practiced in school, upon the teacher’s command nearly all of the children snapped their right arms straight out.

“Sieg heil!” shouted a crescendo of high-pitched children’s voices.

Manfred did not raise his arm or his voice. He just stared at the mustachioed man in the backseat. He had seen his picture many times.

As the car passed, Hitler seemed to raise his hand to the side of his head in acknowledgment of the mass salute. Then he let it drop out of sight.

“Sieg heil! Sieg heil!”

The salutes ended only when the car turned a corner and was gone.

Young Manfred sensed that the mustachioed man in the black car meant danger to him, his family, and every Jew in Germany.

The day that two men in Nazi uniforms came to threaten his grandmother with arrest, she and Manfred were home alone. What crime could an old, sickly woman be guilty of? It seemed that Johanna Steinfeld held a first mortgage on a property in another town that these two men owned. But they had never made any payments and were thus greatly in arrears to her. Now they threatened the elderly woman with jail on a trumped-up charge if she didn’t agree to cancel the mortgage on the property. She went ashen. Turning to Manfred, she told him to run as fast as he could and bring back the mayor.

In 1930s Germany, a town’s Bürgermeister held a great deal of authority, even with outside officials. By then, the man who had once been Josbach’s first and only member of the Nazi Party, Heinrich Haupt, was serving as mayor. He was well liked by all, and even got together with some Jewish friends on Saturday nights to play Skat, the most popular card game in Germany.

Haupt hurried back to the house with Manfred and immediately asked to see the men’s credentials, which they showed him. But when he demanded to see a court-issued arrest warrant, the men admitted they did not have one.

“You have no jurisdiction here,” Haupt said sternly. “Mrs. Steinfeld is a citizen of this town, and your attempt to arrest her is totally unfounded.”

With that, Mayor Haupt kicked the uniformed men out of town.

For the Jews of Josbach, even their traditional Saturday morning stroll to the synagogue in neighboring Halsdorf had become unsafe. Whenever a flour-mill operator saw them approaching, he released his guard dogs with the command: “Los, fass die Juden!” (Go, get the Jews!) After several incidents, the procession of well-dressed men, women, and children started taking the long way around to bypass the mill.

Military convoys rattled through town almost daily. Once, a group of SA brownshirts stopped and began chanting, “When Jewish blood flows from the knife, that time will be so much better!” A pack of Hitler Youth rode through town on bikes, stoning stores with Jewish names and smashing windows. Even longtime customers were afraid to be seen patronizing Josbach’s Jewish merchants.

In 1937, Paula Steinfeld decided it was time to get her family out of Germany. Several Kattens had already left, including Arthur and his wife; after Arthur’s arrest, they had left to join their married daughter, who had settled in New York in the 1920s. Having come to the realization that Germany held no future for Jews of any age, and no matter their background, other Kattens and Steinfelds, including Uncle Solomon, were taking steps to emigrate.

By then, a backlog of Germans—most of them Jews—seeking entry into the United States had begun to form. Under the Immigration Act of 1924, the U.S. State Department was authorized to issue 150,000 immigrant visas annually, subject to quotas assigned to a country in proportion to its contribution to the U.S. population in 1890. As such, 85 percent of immigrants admitted came from Europe. Quotas were based on birthplace, not citizenship or place of residency. By 1937, when Paula decided to get her family out of the country, Nazi Germany was still open to the idea of Jewish emigration, but the annual quota of 27,270 Germans and Austrians allowed into the United States was filled rapidly.

Given the emigration numbers, Paula was told that the family would go on a waiting list for U.S. visas, but they might not make it to America until 1940 or 1941. There was also the difficulty of finding someone to sign an affidavit of support for a widow with three children. None of the relatives who had made it to America were in a position to accept financial responsibility for the family.