There was, for example, the way Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, angrily denied that he'd exterminated 3.5 million people there -- "He said, 'Oh, no, it was only 2.5 million" (adding that the rest died of "other causes") -- and Hoess' almost surreal reaction to being asked if he, like some of his S.S. men, had ever stolen gold from the teeth and jewelry of those they'd gassed.
"He said, 'What kind of man do you think I am?' " Sonnenfeldt recalls.
"And then there was [Hermann] Göring [Adolf Hitler's second in command]. He issued the order for the Holocaust, and to him, it was a scrap of paper," he says. "Well over 5 million people [murdered]. He was absolutely amoral. ... He could be very jovial, and he could be very attractive. ... With him, I constantly had to remind myself what a criminal he was."
* * *
Richard W. Sonnenfeldt
Book: "Witness to Nuremberg."
Appearing: 7:30 p.m. May 7 at JCC on the Palisades, Tenafly.
Was: Chief interpreter for the American prosecution at the war crimes trials.
Interpreted or interrogated: About 20 key witnesses (including Adolf Hitler's secretary and his chauffeur) and 20 major Nazi leaders, including Hermann Göring (Hitler's designated successor), Joachim von Ribbentrop (Hitler's foreign minister) and Rudolf Hoess (commandant of Auschwitz) -- to whom he personally delivered the indictments.
"It is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. ... All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
-- Hermann Göring, in response to whether the German people had wanted war
Sonnenfeldt, 83, who'll retell his story May 7 at the JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly, includes these anecdotes and so many more in his memoir, "Witness to Nuremberg," which also chronicles his own amazing life.
As a U.S. Army private, he was plucked from his unit in 1945 -- to be the interpreter for the generals preparing for the Nuremberg trials -- because he was fluent in German. For good reason. He'd been born Heinz Wolfgang Richard Sonnenfeldt in a Berlin clinic July 3, 1923, and spent his early years in the small Prussian town of Gardelegen.
"My father's [medical] practice actually grew during the first two years of the Nazis. But in 1935, [Hitler] promulgated the so-called Nuremberg Laws, which canceled the civil rights of the Jews and basically demolished their ability to earn a living. We realized that we had to leave Germany. The problem was finding a place to go to."
All over the world
Unable to secure an American visa, Sonnenfeldt's parents, both doctors, sent him and his younger brother, Helmut, to a welcoming school in England in 1938. Two years later, however, Sonnenfeldt was arrested as an enemy alien and deported to Australia, on the notorious troop ship Dunera.
Though he was quickly freed, his England-bound ship was unexpectedly rerouted to Bombay, where Sonnenfeldt was dumped without money or papers. Somehow, seven months later, he managed to arrive in New York, where the newspapers wrote about his amazing journey. All of 17, he'd been to all five continents on his own.
And Sonnenfeldt's biggest challenge was yet to come.
In 1943, he was hastily made a U.S. citizen and shipped off to fight in Italy, France, Germany and Austria as a combat soldier. After the war ended, he was serving out his time in Salzburg, Austria, lubricating an armored vehicle the day his sergeant yelled, "On the double, private! The general needs an interpreter."
As part of the Nuremberg prosecution team, initially based in Paris, Sonnenfeldt conducted the interrogations of many witnesses and future defendants, and eventually served the indictments on the latter.
"I was like a camera. ... These defendants and witnesses had created huge headlines and been depicted as monsters, and I was meeting them, and I was very curious what they were like," he says.
From Göring, Sonnenfeldt also learned why his own father, who'd received an Iron Cross for valor during enemy fire during World War I, had been sent to Buchenwald concentration camp but released after only a week.
"Göring, who was a famous fighter pilot during World War I, told me that he looked over the list of prisoners and he noticed the name of a man who had been his wingman. He said, 'That's not right. He doesn't belong in the concentration camp.' And then he issued the order that all of those with military decorations should be freed." (Eventually, Sonnenfeldt's parents safely made their way to America.)
Inspired by essay
"Witness to Nuremberg" grew out of a school essay his then-8-year-old granddaughter Sara (now 26) had to write about an immigrant. She asked her mother if she knew an immigrant. Her mom told her, "Your grandfather." And the little girl said, "But he doesn't have an accent."
Says Sonnenfeldt, "I have altogether 15 grandchildren. ... And then everybody said, 'Wow, you ought to write down your history,' because none really knew it."
He started working on his memoirs in 1994 and had a manuscript of 1,300 pages by 2001.
His December 2002 visit to Germany to speak at Hitler's old party headquarters in Nuremberg generated much publicity -- and a sight-unseen offer from a German publisher for a German-language memoir. "Mehr als ein Leben" was an instant bestseller when it came out in 2003. "Witness" was published in 2006.
Sonnenfeldt, who earned a degree in engineering from Johns Hopkins University and worked in business for many years, lives with his wife, Barbara, in Port Washington, N.Y. One of his proudest accomplishments is having crossed the Atlantic three times in his sailboat Peregrine.
"I said, for 60 years, I've done pretty much what I could never control, what fate imposed on me. Now I want to do something that I want -- which was sailing across the ocean."