CENTENARY CELEBRATION: Victor Brombert delivered the closing salute at a 2023 event at Princeton University that celebrated his 100th birthday and the release of his latest book, “The Pensive Citadel.” The legendary scholar, teacher, and World War II hero died last month at 101. (Princeton University, Humanities Council; Tori Repp/Fotobuddy, 2023)

By Donald Gilpin

Beth Archer Brombert, widow of esteemed Princeton University professor, author, and war hero Victor Brombert, who died on November 26 at 101 years old, went out to get the newspaper in the driveway of their Princeton home on the morning of November 30, four days after her husband’s death. She described what happened next.

“On returning to the house, I glanced at the dry, brown clematis on the brick wall to the left of our front door. To my astonishment, on the very top of the desiccated vine, on a stem well above the dead leaves, standing like a star on a Christmas tree, I saw a single purple flower — fully open.”

Beth Brombert, herself an acclaimed writer of both fiction and nonfiction, continued, “In the 20 plus years since I planted it, I have watched it grow and seen its delicate purple flowers increase in size and profusion. It has never, ever bloomed in November.”

The clematis flower, blooming from a dead vine in late November, is not the only manifestation of Victor Bromberg that lives on.

In addition to the thousands of students he taught and inspired at Yale University for 25 years from 1950 to 1975 and at Princeton University from 1975 until his retirement in 1999, there are more than 15 books and numerous essays he has published, and, perhaps most astonishing of all, the enduring history of his four years as a World War II hero, a “Ritchie Boy” in a secret U.S. Army intelligence unit whose multi-lingual members “fought in every major European battle and supplied most of the intelligence that the United States gathered on the continent,” according to The New York Times.

Brombert, described by The Wall Street Journal as “one of the glories of humanistic scholarship,” continued to write up until his death. His The Pensive Citadel, a collection of essays, was named one of The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2023, and an essay about his experience as a Ritchie Boy, written in October of this year, is scheduled to appear in the Hudson Review in early 2025.

Born on November 11, 2023 in Berlin, Brombert was the son of Russian-Jewish parents, who had fled from Russia to Germany at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, and then fled to Paris when Hitler came to power, and eventually emigrated to New York in 1941 on a banana freighter along with 1,200 other refugees. The press greeted the boat as a “floating concentration camp,” according to an obituary written by Bromberg and his family last. month, shortly before his death.

Soon after Pearl Harbor, Brombert was drafted into the U.S. Army and because of his fluency in several languages was sent to Camp Ritchie in Maryland for frontline intelligence training. In June 1944 he was part of the first American armored division to land on Omaha Beach. He participated in the battle of Normandy, the breakthrough at Saint-Lo, and the liberation of Paris.

Then, according to the family’s obituary, he took part in the Battle of Hurtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, and the liberation of Alsace, during which he was responsible for frontline interrogation of prisoners, behind-the-lines reconnaissance work, and liaison with the French Resistance. After the war Brombert also did liaison work with the Soviet army in Berlin, dealing with displaced persons camps.

Many years later he was one of the main participants interviewed in The Ritchie Boys, a 2004 documentary, and also appeared on 60 Minutes and in other histories of the Ritchie Boys.

Brombert enrolled at Yale University in 1946 on the GI Bill, earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 1948, a Ph.D. in romance languages and literature in 1953, and became a member of Yale’s Department of Romance Languages, where he served three successive terms as department chair. He married Beth Archer in 1950.

Transferring to Princeton in 1975, Brombert, the Henry Putnam University Professor of Romance and Comparative Literatures, received a number of distinguished appointments, honors, and awards, including visiting professorships at several universities in Italy, France, and across the U.S.

He holds honorary degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Toronto, and in France he was made both Commandeur des Palmes Academiques and Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur.

Brombert put into words his love of teaching in a 2021 interview with Princeton Alumni Weekly. “I loved every moment of my teaching profession,” he said. “I liked the small seminars, I liked the discussion classes, I liked the large lectures. But what I liked most of all, I think what gave me the greatest satisfaction, also of a histrionic nature, is the large lecture course I had for a freshman class in European literature. I had between 300 and 400 students every year.”

As described in the obituary written by the deceased and his family, “Brombert was passionate about words, language, food, wine, travel, and music. Wherever he was, music was playing. A bass-baritone, he was informed as a young man by a voice teacher that he could have an operatic career. Ambitious by nature, he opted for academia, in which he believed he had a higher likelihood of reaching the very top of his profession.

“Colleagues, students, and friends have fond memories of Victor (a consummate performer) spontaneously bursting into song. He commanded a wealth of operatic arias, as well as Russian, French, and German songs that he had learned in his youth. He would also recite — even in his last days — entire poems in Russian, German, Italian, and English. Always elegantly attired, he charmed everyone he met with his charisma, wit, and eloquence.”

In addition to his wife of more than 74 years, Brombert is survived by their children, Marc and Lauren Brombert. Donations may be made in Brombert’s honor to Penn Medicine Princeton Health and the Center for Modern Aging Princeton, both organizations designated by the family.