Witness to Nuremberg

by Richard W. Sonnenfeldt

Book Overview

In Witness to Nuremberg , the chief interpreter for the American prosecution at the Nuremberg trials after World War II offers his insights into dealing directly with Hermann Goering, a leading member... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1559708166
• ISBN13: 9781559708166
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating biography

I greatly enjoyed this fascinating account of a Jewish lad's escape from Nazi Germany and his life beyond. His depiction of the stark contrast between life in a rural German town before and after the Nazi takeover reminded me that happy endings for the Jewish minority were rare indeed -- in fact, miraculous. The first part of the book concerns the author's services in the cause of justice at the Nuremberg trials. His story should remind us all that we must be eternally vigilant against the forces of fascism. It can happen anywhere.

An Important, Captivating Memoir

During 1945-46, Richard Sonnenfeldt, age 22, was the chief interpreter on the U.S. prosecution team at Nuremberg. In this role, he served U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, the chief U.S. prosecutor, and his interrogation team as the lead interpreter in the pre-indictment interrogations of many imprisoned Nazis, including all 22 who became Nuremberg defendants. Sonnenfeldt actually was much more than the U.S. prosecution's lead interpreter at Nuremberg. Because of his German and English language skills, his smarts and maturity, and his surprising rapport with and control over many of the prisoners, Sonnenfeldt actually became a de facto senior interrogator. His work and successes as interpreter and interrogator are recorded in the many thousands of pages of interrogation reports that are central parts of the Nuremberg trial and historical record. At the end of the Nuremberg trial year, Justice Jackson saw to it personally that Sonnenfeldt received a military decoration for his work. But that's actually not the half of it. In outline form, this is Richard Sonnenfeldt's quite amazing life story: * born Jewish, son of two physicians, in Gardelegen, a town in north central Germany, in 1923; * happy, assimilated boyhood until Nazism and Nuremberg laws change everything, including shutting down his parents' work; * getting out of Germany, along with his younger brother, to a boarding school in England; * being interned in England as an enemy alien once active war with Germany started in 1940; * being shipped with other internees and German POWs from England to Australia; * being paroled from Australia to India, and making it on his own there; * getting passage from India to the U.S. (His parents, in a separate miracle, had made it from Germany to Sweden and from there to Baltimore); * becoming, as his ship docked in New York, a media event because he was an unsupervised boy who had survived all of these "adventures"; * working, while still a teenager, as an electrician in Baltimore and entering Johns Hopkins night college; * being drafted into the U.S. Army, becoming a U.S. citizen, and fighting in Europe as a combat soldier; * entering the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945; * in May 1945, being called out of a motor pool in Austria, because of his bilingual skills, to serve as General William J. ("Wild Bill") Donovan's OSS interpreter; * moving with Donovan into the Justice Jackson/war crimes project that became Nuremberg; * serving as the principal and preferred interpreter of each prisoner, including Hermann Goering; * playing a significant role in interrogating and studying each of them; * being half of the 2-man team that served the October 1945 indictment on each Nuremberg defendant; * working for the U.S. prosecution throughout the trial; * returning to Baltimore and succeeding as a Johns Hopkins engineering student; * becoming a distinguished engineer with RCA, where he was part of the team that invented color television

A terrific "read."

Barbara Schlang's review.....Richard W. Sonnenfeldt's just published book (Witness to Nuremberg) reveals personal conversations with the top Nazi defendants at the Nuremberg trials, shedding a merciless light on their criminality, but it is also a tale of adventure never told before. He was just twenty-two when he became Chief Interpreter for the American prosecution at the War Crimes trials of 1945-46. Born into a Jewish family in Germany, he fled to attend school in England in 1938, to escape the Nazi terror. But when the Germans conquered France two years later, his erstwhile hosts interned him as a German national and deported him in a prison ship, that was torpedoed by a German U-boat, but made it to Australia. The British then realized their mistake and ordered him back to England to be freed, but now his boat was diverted to in Bombay, India. Instead of returning to England he managed to go to the United States, all solo, at age seventeen. On arrival in New York he became a media celebrity in April 1941. Two and a half years later he was an American citizen and combat soldier who fought in France, Germany and Austria. He was one of the first to see the concentration camp of Dachau and its prisoners, too stunned amid mountains of corpses to grasp that freedom was theirs. General "Wild Bill" Donovan, the head of OSS (predecessor to the CIA) who was organizing the American prosecution for the Nuremberg trial then picked up him as his interpreter. At Nuremberg, directing a staff of fifty, he produced over 10,000 pages of sworn testimony, interpreting and later himself conducting interrogations of the twenty top surviving Nazis. He had Goering, the No.2 Nazi, acknowledge his signature on the order of July 1941 to organize the holocaust. He extracted from Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, a detailed statement how three and one half hapless victims were exterminated at Auschwitz, at a rate over 20,000 a day. After the verdicts, which punished ten of the defendants by hanging them, he returned to America, served on the team that created color TV and became a noted executive. To celebrate his fiftieth year in business he crossed the Atlantic in his sailboat, also celebrating his 75th birthday. He was invited to return to the small German town where he grew up and his reports of interaction with the citizens there are no less interesting than his recollections of Nuremberg. He was then invited to speak at a principal cathedral in Berlin, and at Hitler's erstwhile Nazi headquarters in Nuremberg. Soon he was feted by the German national press and became a sought after personality on German television and radio. His book "Witness to Nuremberg" published by Arcade Press, follows his German bestseller "Mehr als ein Leben." I could not put the book down. It is full of many thrilling and some dangerous adventures, but most of all it is a tale of the zest of life and it is all true!

A remarkable book!!!

This is a memoir of a man who has had a varied, distinguished life. He is a survivor from Nazi Germany, WW11 veteran, chief interpreter at the Nuremberg Trial of 1945, inventor, entrepreneur, successful business man, and devoted family man. He escaped from Germany in 1940 at age 17. His odyssey took him from England, to Australia, India, and finally to the U.S. Most remarkably, as chief interpreter at the Nuremberg trial he provides us with valuable insight into the participants of the trial. This especially valued as the verdict in the trial of Saddam Hussein has just been rendered and contrasts and similarities are so evident. At the end of the book, Richard describes his reception upon his return to Gardelegen, the German town where he was born. The exchanges between the townspeople and Richard are poignant. A remarkable man and book!!