Archive for November, 2006
Meet Richard Sonnenfeldt
Down by the water, there is an orderly collection of houses, some large, some cottage-like, brushed by gentle bay breezes. Just steps from the tranquility of Long Island Sound, this neighborhood feels peaceful. Secure. Safe.
One would never guess that in another time, near more chaotic shores, one massive evil was ripped out of the darkness, illuminated, and punished, in large part by the genial, silver-haired retiree now living in one of these Port Washington homes. His name is Richard W. Sonnenfeldt, and he is the only person still alive who had lengthy conversations with those top Nazis who survived Adolf Hitler just after the end of World War II.
A German Jew by birth, Sonnenfeldt escaped from pre-World War II Europe, embracing America as a citizen and soldier during the war. And then, suddenly, he was hand-picked as the American prosecution team’s chief interpreter and a key interrogator of history’s most monstrous prisoners of war, during the pretrial questioning of witnesses, before the 1945 Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals took place.Down by the water, there is an orderly collection of houses, some large, some cottage-like, brushed by gentle bay breezes. Just steps from the tranquility of Long Island Sound, this neighborhood feels peaceful. Secure. Safe.
One would never guess that in another time, near more chaotic shores, one massive evil was ripped out of the darkness, illuminated, and punished, in large part by the genial, silver-haired retiree now living in one of these Port Washington homes. His name is Richard W. Sonnenfeldt, and he is the only person still alive who had lengthy conversations with those top Nazis who survived Adolf Hitler just after the end of World War II.
A German Jew by birth, Sonnenfeldt escaped from pre-World War II Europe, embracing America as a citizen and soldier during the war. And then, suddenly, he was hand-picked as the American prosecution team’s chief interpreter and a key interrogator of history’s most monstrous prisoners of war, during the pretrial questioning of witnesses, before the 1945 Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals took place.
