A RITCHIE BOY

A young Austrian Jewish man whose family has fled Europe on the eve of the Holocaust and settled in the Midwest has an unexpected experience in World War II.

In the wake of the Nazi annexation of Austria, a non-Jewish Austrian immigrant to the United States seeks the help of a wealthy department store magnate—doubtless inspired by the Midwestern Jewish families who founded the likes of Kaufmann’s and Lazarus—to get affidavits for her Jewish friend’s family, the Stoffs, to come to America. The Stoffs’ son, Eli, is a teenager when his family manages to immigrate, inadvertently leaving behind Eli’s grandmother and thereby dooming her. The novel’s title refers to the aspect of the story that has the potential to be the most interesting: When Eli, living with his parents in Columbus, Ohio, is drafted as an American soldier, his German-speaking background makes him eligible for a special military intelligence unit based at Camp Ritchie in Maryland. The “Ritchie Boys” are primarily recent German Jewish and Austrian Jewish immigrants and refugees who are therefore well positioned to spy on the Nazis. A compelling historical novel could certainly be written on this topic, thoughtfully probing an aspect of the Jewish American experience in World War II that has been largely unrepresented in fiction; unfortunately, this is not that novel. Only a small part of the story actually involves Eli’s experience as a Ritchie Boy; the rest describes the same few dramatic aspects of his biography—the day he and his family realized they had to get out of Austria; how a beneficent American businessman saved their lives; how Eli later met his wife—over and over again. These plot elements are reiterated by continually introducing additional narrative perspectives, which despite being new are not sufficiently distinct, nor do they provide any interesting new information. The story that the novel sets out to tell is a relatively simple one, and the rest seems to be only filler—poorly written at that.

A promising idea whose execution is disappointing.