Chief American Interpreter at Nuremberg Trials [video 60min]

At age 22, German-native Richard Sonnenfeldt became chief interpreter for the American prosecution of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials. In his new memoir, Witness to Nuremberg, he recounts his experiences questioning top Nazi officials, including Third Reich second-in-command Hermann Goring and Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Hoess. At this event at the JCC in Manhattan, Sonnenfeldt details his impressions of the Nazi criminals and reflects on what he calls their"mediocrity." He also discusses the legacy of the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials, and the impact of their memory in modern Germany and around the world. Sonnenfeldt was born in a German-Jewish home in northeastern Germany in 1923. After fleeing to an English boarding school in 1938, he was deported to Australia as a"German Enemy Alien" and eventually immigrated to the United States in 1941. There, he joined the U.S. Army, and was present at the Dachau concentration camp on the day of its liberation. After the Nuremberg trials, he graduated from Johns Hopkins University School of Engineering. He went on to become a principal developer of color television and served as NBC's Executive Vice President from 1979 to 1982.