Richard Sonnenfeldt, Author of Witness to Nuremberg, Visits TIGER 21: Spins Remarkable Tale of Escape from Nazi Germany and Subsequent Return with U.S. Army to Interview Architects of the Holocaust
Sonnenfeldt recounts journey that took him from Jewish refugee to become chief interpreter for American prosecution at the Nuremberg trials; addressed Hermann Goering as “Little Mr. Nothing” and challenged camp commandant Rudolph Hoess over how many victims killed at Auschwitz; one general used toy tanks to demonstrate blitzkrieg strategy
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NEW YORK (June 27, 2007) – Speakers who address monthly meetings of TIGER 21, the nation’s premier peer-to-peer learning group for high-net-worth investors, don’t come exclusively from the worlds of finance and wealth management. They also discuss international relations, philanthropy, science, and other topics far removed from investment returns.
Richard W. Sonnenfeldt, father of TIGER 21 founder Michael Sonnenfeldt and author of the memoir Witness to Nuremberg, recently visited TIGER 21 and recounted a tale as improbable as it was inspiring: his escape from Nazi Germany as a boy; his circuitous route to America that took him first to Africa, India and Australia; and his eventual return to war-torn Germany with the U.S. Army to become chief interpreter for the Nuremberg war crimes prosecution.
A fascinating tale of luck, grit and street smarts, Richard Sonnenfeldt’s book recalls a young man who suffered ostracism and physical danger in his native country, yet never lost his faith in himself or in the ultimate triumph of justice. Indeed, the savvy young man of Witness to Nuremberg brims with self-confidence.
That brio is still evident in the now 84-year-old Mr. Sonnenfeldt who, after his presentation at TIGER 21, took questions on both the World War II era and the current state of global affairs. In recent years he has lectured widely on Nuremberg and served as a commentator for documentaries about the trials. This past April, he was interviewed by Charlie Rose – the segment is available online at www.charlierose.com. He has also crossed the Atlantic Ocean three times in his sailboat Peregrine, including a celebratory trip for his 75th birthday.
A compelling read, Witness to Nuremberg was first published in Germany in 2003 as Mehr als ein Leben (More than One Life). America’s British and Russian allies, Mr. Sonnenfeldt relates, wanted captured Nazi officials to be shot immediately. It was the Americans who pressed for trials, and as a result the legal structure of war crimes prosecution was conceived and written.
Mr. Sonnenfeldt arrived in the U.S. at 17 and settled in Baltimore with his parents, who had managed to flee ahead of the pending storm in Europe. He became a citizen in 1943, three weeks after he was drafted to serve in the Army and had already begun basic training. He later saw combat in Italy and France, as well as Germany, where he had been subject to fierce anti-Semitism as a child in a rural village.
Assigned to a unit in Germany after the war, he became the first interpreter for the Nuremberg prosecution team as it labored to interview its captives – Mr. Sonnenfeldt reports that he was initially given the job because he spoke English with less of an accent than the other interpreters. Within a short time he became Chief of the Interpretation Section, in charge of selecting translators for all of the defendants and managing a staff of 50 that was examining tens of thousands of pages of sworn testimony. He was 22 years old.
His new job brought some of the little ironies of history that never make it into the textbooks. To stop Hermann Göring from interrupting him during questioning, Mr. Sonnenfeldt abruptly called Hitler’s former deputy “Herr Gering” – “Little Mister Nothing” in German. The fallen Reichsmarschall never interrupted the young American again, instead requesting that he be his sole interpreter, something Mr. Sonnenfeldt wasn’t sure was a compliment or an insult.
On another occasion, the former chief of staff of the German army used hundreds of toy soldiers and tanks spread out on the floor to recreate major battles inside the Soviet Union, in an effort to show how things would have turned out differently had Hitler not been calling the shots. Mr. Sonnenfeldt wondered, “What other Jewish private in the U.S. Army has ever had Hitler’s top general crawl on the carpet with him for a lesson in blitzkrieg strategy?”
Mr. Sonnenfeldt also translated the questioning of Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Hoess, who was later hanged at the entrance of the infamous Polish death camp.
“Hoess was visibly angered when I asked whether it was true that he had exterminated 3.5 million human beings,” Mr. Sonnenfeldt recalled. “‘No – it was only 2.5 million,’ he responded. ‘The rest died of other causes.’”
Mr. Sonnenfeldt – now also an interrogator – asked whether Hoess had enriched himself with the possessions of his victims at Auschwitz. “He seemed indignant at the question,” Mr. Sonnenfeldt recounted. “He said, “‘What kind of a man do you think I am?’” Later, Hoess confided that when he finally told his wife the truth of what he did at Auschwitz, “‘she moved out of my bed – and never let me touch her again.’”
Mr. Sonnenfeldt recalled for TIGER 21 members the day in 1932 when his father invited a Catholic priest and Protestant minister to the Sonnenfeldt home to listen to the election returns that brought Hitler to power. “He seems like a sensible fellow,” the elder Mr. Sonnenfeldt remarked of the new chancellor, prompting the two clergymen to stridently disagree.
As anti-Semitism took greater hold and Jews fell victim to ever-increasing edicts limiting their freedoms, “Most of us kept hoping that the latest oppressive Nazi law would be the last, until it was too late,” Mr. Sonnenfeldt said. “People deluded themselves. They didn’t believe what they were seeing with their own eyes.”
An inveterate tinkerer and prodigy with electronic devices, Mr. Sonnenfeldt managed a radio manufacturing shop during an unexpected stop in India as a teenage refugee, and after his arrival in America became the youngest master electrician in the state of Maryland.
After the War and his experiences at Nuremberg, Mr. Sonnenfeldt earned an engineering degree from Johns Hopkins University. He worked at RCA Corp., developing the technology for color television receivers, patenting over thirty of his innovations and rising through the executive ranks. He also served as president and CEO of Digitronics Corp. In the 1980s he established the Sonnenfeldt Family Fund in Engineering at Johns Hopkins.
Mr. Sonnenfeldt has returned to Germany and his hometown of Gardelegen (which spent 45 years behind the Iron Curtain) numerous times in the last decade, meeting with increasingly large groups about history and reconciliation. His speech at one of Berlin’s largest cathedrals was widely covered in the German press, which also recounted his remarkable life story. He finally returned to Nuremberg in 2002, holding a press conference and giving the first speech at Nuremberg’s new museum dedicated to the rise and fall of Nazism.
At the close of his book, Mr. Sonnenfeldt concludes that had there been no Nazi Germany he most likely would have followed in his father’s footsteps, become a small-town doctor, and led “a dull life ever after.” And had he been born an Aryan, he probably would have died as a soldier in Hitler’s army. “Yes,” he reasons, “life has been good to me.”
“While TIGER 21 was founded as a forum for maximizing long-term investment gains among wealthy investors, our members are also citizens of the world with wide-ranging interests that extend well outside the financial,” said Michael Sonnenfeldt. “I have to say that I was confident that this particular speaker, my father, would have an especially rich and captivating story to share with fellow members about life’s unexpected turns.”
“We were thrilled to host Richard Sonnenfeldt, who not only had a front-row seat to history but was a major player in one of the most important chapters of the 20th Century,” said TIGER 21 president Tommy Gallagher. “To have been so instrumental, at such a young age, in advancing such a momentous trial is a mark of true distinction. I know all our members and their guests found Richard’s presentation fascinating, insightful, and still very relevant today.”