Richard Sonnenfeldt, 86, Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, became principal interpreter for American prosecutors
Among the 21 men he questioned were Hermann Goering, commander of the Luftwaffe and Hitler's designated successor; Albert Speer, who ran Germany's war machine as armaments minister; and Rudolf Hess, who had been Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party. All bar Hess were convicted of war crimes.
Sonnenfeldt's selection for this role was entirely fortuitous. As a private in the US Army, he had fought at the Battle of the Bulge and was working in a vehicle maintenance pool, greasing an armoured car, when he came to the attention of General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS – later the CIA).
Donovan wanted an interpreter, and Sonnenfeldt – fluent in both German and English – was ideal. Donovan subsequently passed him on to the chief US prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H Jackson, whose team was interrogating the 21 leading Nazis who would become defendants at Nuremberg. Sonnenfeldt effectively became the senior interrogator as he translated for six or seven hours a day from July to October 1945.
He was then one of the two men who actually served the indictments, and in his autobiography, Witness to Nuremberg (2006), he wrote: "As we went through the awful recital of crimes over and over, for each of the 21 inmates, hour after hour, I envisioned anew the stacks of pitiful corpses and gagged once again on the smell of assembly-line extermination these men and their cohorts had unleashed... Elsewhere they might easily have been taken for a group of very ordinary men, picked at random from a crowd."
In an interview in 2007, Sonnenfeldt recalled telling Goering: "When I translate the colonel's questions into German and your answers into English, you keep quiet until I am finished. You don't interrupt. When the stenographer has recorded my translation, you may tell me if you have a problem, and then I will decide whether it is necessary to consider your comments."
At no time, he said, was he motivated by revenge: "Of course, I felt great satisfaction to be at Nuremberg, but my mind was more on doing my job than avenging a personal past in Nazi Germany. As to punishing the defendants for what they had done to humanity – that was the assigned task of the tribunal."
When the business of Nuremberg had been completed, Justice Jackson recommended Sonnenfeldt – by then a sergeant – for the US Army Commendation Ribbon.
Read entire article at telegraph.co.uk
Sonnenfeldt's selection for this role was entirely fortuitous. As a private in the US Army, he had fought at the Battle of the Bulge and was working in a vehicle maintenance pool, greasing an armoured car, when he came to the attention of General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS – later the CIA).
Donovan wanted an interpreter, and Sonnenfeldt – fluent in both German and English – was ideal. Donovan subsequently passed him on to the chief US prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H Jackson, whose team was interrogating the 21 leading Nazis who would become defendants at Nuremberg. Sonnenfeldt effectively became the senior interrogator as he translated for six or seven hours a day from July to October 1945.
He was then one of the two men who actually served the indictments, and in his autobiography, Witness to Nuremberg (2006), he wrote: "As we went through the awful recital of crimes over and over, for each of the 21 inmates, hour after hour, I envisioned anew the stacks of pitiful corpses and gagged once again on the smell of assembly-line extermination these men and their cohorts had unleashed... Elsewhere they might easily have been taken for a group of very ordinary men, picked at random from a crowd."
In an interview in 2007, Sonnenfeldt recalled telling Goering: "When I translate the colonel's questions into German and your answers into English, you keep quiet until I am finished. You don't interrupt. When the stenographer has recorded my translation, you may tell me if you have a problem, and then I will decide whether it is necessary to consider your comments."
At no time, he said, was he motivated by revenge: "Of course, I felt great satisfaction to be at Nuremberg, but my mind was more on doing my job than avenging a personal past in Nazi Germany. As to punishing the defendants for what they had done to humanity – that was the assigned task of the tribunal."
When the business of Nuremberg had been completed, Justice Jackson recommended Sonnenfeldt – by then a sergeant – for the US Army Commendation Ribbon.