Witness to Nuremberg: The Many Lives of the Man Who Translated at the Nazi War Trials

Written by W. Richard Sonnenfeldt

Narrated by Robert Blumenfeld

Length

7h 52m

Rating

4.2 (92 ratings)

In this gripping memoir by the chief American interpreter at the Nuremberg trials, Richard Sonnenfeldt recounts a remarkable life. By the time he was 18, Sonnenfeldt had grown up in Germany, escaped to England, been deported to Australia as a "German enemy alien", arrived in the U.S., and joined the U.S. Army. By age 22 he had fought in the Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp, when he was appointed chief interpreter for the American prosecution of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials. During his service, he spent pretrial time with Hermann Göering as well as other top Nazi leaders like von Ribbentrop, Rudolph Höss, and Julius Streicher, the infamous editor of the anti-Semitic Der Sturmer. An engineer in later life, Sonnenfeldt was also a principal developer of color TV and computer technology and a key player in NASA's preparation of the first moon shot.