A 90th birthday celebration was held Jan. 31 at McGregor Memorial Conference Center in honor of Dr. Guy Stern, former vice president
of academic affairs and distinguished professor emeritus at Wayne State and former WWII POW interrogator.

Food, laughter and standing ovations filled the banquet hall as Stern was acknowledged for many years of service and a lifetime of
achievements.

Stern, who retired in 2003, expressed his feelings in regard to leaving WSU.

“I went from being a distinguished professor to an extinguished professor, but was still able to keep my office,” he said.

In addition to WSU, Stern also taught at various American universities and served as the dean of graduate studies and research in the Department of German Studies for Cincinnati University in 1973.

Stern currently serves as a member of the Humanities Center committee and the Board of Visitors of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Stern’s current research as director of the International Institute of the Righteous at the Holocaust Memorial Center focuses on strategies for discovering the motivations for altruism – the belief that acting for the benefit of others is right and good.

“Our goal is to see if we can spread the ideal of altruism under harsh conditions,” Stern said.

Stern came to the U.S. from Hildesheim, Germany in the 1930s after Nazi laws discriminating against Jews started to take hold. Stern’s uncle, who had earlier emigrated from Germany, inflated his bank account to appear wealthy so that U.S. officials wouldn’t
deny his nephew a visa on the grounds of becoming a public charge.
In 1937, Stern received his papers to enter the U.S.

Sterns’s achievements reach far beyond the emeritus status he received from WSU.

First serving as an interrogator of prisoners of war at Camp Ritchie in Pennsylvania and later being promoted to sergeant led Stern to organizing one of his toughest but most recognized captures of the Normandy invasion.

Dr. Gustav Wilhelm Schuebbe, a Nazi doctor who admitted to killing
more than 20,000 people because he felt they were unfit to live, was captured in May 1945 due to a rigorous investigation from the prisoners of war interrogators at Camp Ritchie, which screened prisoners for specialized knowledge.

Stern developed several strategies for gaining vital information from prisoners wishing to enter the U.S. One approach was to “buddy up” to the prisoners and find an area of shared interest, he said.

“Before they knew it, they forgot that I was the enemy and eventually told me what I needed to know,” Stern said.

The second strategy was to play on their fears, he said, in a type of good cop/bad cop routine he carried out with an assistant.

When prisoners refused to cooperate, the assistant would threaten to send them to the Russians, which in actuality was Stern’s office, where Stern sat clothed from head to toe in Russian attire that he had obtained from a kit of Russian uniforms. To add authenticity to the scenery, a photograph of Joseph Stalin hung on the office wall.

Stern’s birthday celebration shed light on a man whose history and achievements deemed him worthy of recognition