Richard Sonnenfeldt, the chief interpreter for the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials, died Oct. 9 at his Long Island, N.Y. home. He was 86.
Sonnenfeldt was a German-born Jew who fled the country in 1938 at 15 and eventually made his way to the United States. He enlisted in the Army, fought in the Battle of the Bulge and was among the American troops who liberated the Dachau concentration camp.
He was recruited during his Army service by the Office of Strategic Services to assist the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials, becoming the chief interpreter for the Army and later the prosecution team that interviewed the Nazi war criminals on trial.
He interrogated some of the most notorious Nazi leaders of World War II, including Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Goering. All were convicted as war criminals.
Sonnenfeldt’s book of memoirs, “Witness to Nuremberg,” recounts his many meetings with the notorious defendants during the trials. He later graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in electrical engineering and had a successful career in technology and business. — jta & ap