Interpreter Leaves Impression Of Nazi Criminals
By STEVEN M. SWEENEY
CHAUTAUQUA — Most people will never know what it was like to breathe the same air as Hermann Goering, but Richard Sonnenfeldt does. To a crowd of about 70 at Chautauqua Institution’s Athanaeum Hotel, Monday night, the former chief U.S. interpreter during the Nuremberg Trials gave the audience his account of history.
‘‘Except for Goering, I saw them as very average people. In ordinary life, they would have been policemen, school teachers, farmers,’’ Sonnenfeldt said. ‘‘They were ‘Yes men,’ accomplices. It’s a hard thing to say that’s what we had at Nuremberg. But the principals had already committed suicide.’’
Hermann Goering, Hitler’s secondin- command was the only principal — the only original Nazi remaining from the 1920s movement. Sonnenfeldt described an evil ambition in the Luftwaffe commander who wanted only to rule Germany. It was on his written order that Nazi concentration camps were created and the extermination of millions of Jews began.
‘‘Was this done under Hitler’s orders or was it a last attempt to ingratiate himself to Hitler?’’ the interpreter said. ‘‘We were so anxious to establish his guilt, we never asked him why. No one knows. But to him, the death of millions would have been a small price to pay to regain his former stature.’’
In his interviews with Goering after World War II, the then 22-year-old American soldier learned of the Nazi henchman’s belief that the German people would build a great mausoleum memorializing sometime in the 1970s.
‘‘‘My body won’t be in it,’ he said. ‘But Napoleon’s body is not in his tomb either,’’’ Sonnenfeldt recalls hearing Goering say.
The interpreter also told the audience gathered Monday about his interview with Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz — one of the most deadly concentrations camps during the war. The commandant eventually became a witness at the first Nuremberg tribunal. Sonnenfeldt asked him if it were true that 3.5 million people were murdered under his direction.
‘‘He looked rather indignant and said, ‘No, only two and one half million people were killed there,’ ’’ the interpreter recalls. It had also been known as investigations progressed that Nazis were stealing gold fillings, teeth and trinkets from prisoners as they arrived.
‘‘I asked him if he had ever personally enriched himself with prisoner’s possessions, he became furious and said, ‘No, what kind of a man do you think I am?’’’ Sonnenfeldt said.
After his 50-minute presentation, interested admirers surrounded Sonnenfeldt at the speaker’s platform. Many just wanted to hear more stories about Nuremberg and the war and the happenings in the life of a young man thrust into important roles so early in his life.
‘‘The best thing is that he was there,’’ said Cristoph Safferling, an assistant law professor a the Erlangen-Nuremberg University, who specializes in the Nuremberg trials and their subsequent impact on the German people. ‘‘He has personal memories of the first criminal trial. When you hear him speak, his first-hand account of the issues is much better than reading any book.
‘‘He has seen them.’’