Goosesteps
This man was face-to-face with evil, and what he saw echoes today.
Richard Sonnenfeldt was a German Jew who escaped the Nazis, emigrated to the United States, fought in Patton’s Army and became, at age 22, chief American interpreter at the Nuremberg trials of top Nazis.
Here’s what he wrote about them:
“The mediocrity, the lack of distinction of intellect, knowledge, or insight, of virtually all defendants was appalling ….
“To serve a dictator, one must be gullible and ambitious and have no scruples. One must not mind being insulted by a Fuhrer or else have an intellect so deficient as not to notice insults. Who else would fawningly and forever feed the vanity of a man who never listened but only spouted inane theories of conquest, racism and economic nonsense ….
“Dictators have no peers, only sycophants to do their bidding. That’s how it was in Nazi Germany. And so it is wherever autocrats rule in government or business. Dictators and braggarts cause their own demise, because when they finally are in extremis, they have only their lackeys to call on, while their adversaries attract the best of men.”
Remind you of anybody?
Nearly 50 years later, Sonnenfeldt returned to the German town where he lived as a boy. He spoke to high school students who wanted to know, “Can it happen again?”
He told them, “I hope not, but you can make sure it will never happen again. You must guard your freedom and the freedom of the courts, the press, radio and television. You must support free speech and never support politicians who want judges and teachers to do their bidding. When you see a demagogue or hatemonger throwing dirty snowballs, stop him before there is an avalanche no one can stop. Don’t let evil men deceive you; don’t support politicians who blame scapegoats for problems. If you do all that, it won’t happen again. You will be proud of your humanity and you will not become accessories to evil deeds.”
Amen.
Sonnenfeldt told his story in the 2002 book Witness to Nuremberg: The Many Lives of the Man who Translated at the Nazi War Trials.
Even apart from Nuremberg, he led a remarkable life: a childhood in Germany, sent to England by his parents in 1938, wrongly interned as a German enemy alien and deported to Australia. He made his way to India and then America, where he was reunited with his family.
He was drafted by the Army, fought in the Battle of Bulge and was at the liberation of Dachau. After Nuremberg, he became an engineer, helped develop the first computers and color TV, and worked on the first NASA moonshot.
In his 70s, he sailed across the Atlantic three times with a crew in a 44-foot boat – the last when he was 75.
I ran across Sonnenfeldt’s book while roaming the shelves of Reader’s Corner, a great second-hand bookstore on Hillsborough Street near N.C. State in Raleigh. You should check it out.
Goosesteps
This man was face-to-face with evil, and what he saw echoes today.
Richard Sonnenfeldt was a German Jew who escaped the Nazis, emigrated to the United States, fought in Patton’s Army and became, at age 22, chief American interpreter at the Nuremberg trials of top Nazis.
Here’s what he wrote about them:
“The mediocrity, the lack of distinction of intellect, knowledge, or insight, of virtually all defendants was appalling ….
“To serve a dictator, one must be gullible and ambitious and have no scruples. One must not mind being insulted by a Fuhrer or else have an intellect so deficient as not to notice insults. Who else would fawningly and forever feed the vanity of a man who never listened but only spouted inane theories of conquest, racism and economic nonsense ….
“Dictators have no peers, only sycophants to do their bidding. That’s how it was in Nazi Germany. And so it is wherever autocrats rule in government or business. Dictators and braggarts cause their own demise, because when they finally are in extremis, they have only their lackeys to call on, while their adversaries attract the best of men.”
Remind you of anybody?
Nearly 50 years later, Sonnenfeldt returned to the German town where he lived as a boy. He spoke to high school students who wanted to know, “Can it happen again?”
He told them, “I hope not, but you can make sure it will never happen again. You must guard your freedom and the freedom of the courts, the press, radio and television. You must support free speech and never support politicians who want judges and teachers to do their bidding. When you see a demagogue or hatemonger throwing dirty snowballs, stop him before there is an avalanche no one can stop. Don’t let evil men deceive you; don’t support politicians who blame scapegoats for problems. If you do all that, it won’t happen again. You will be proud of your humanity and you will not become accessories to evil deeds.”
Amen.
Sonnenfeldt told his story in the 2002 book Witness to Nuremberg: The Many Lives of the Man who Translated at the Nazi War Trials.
Even apart from Nuremberg, he led a remarkable life: a childhood in Germany, sent to England by his parents in 1938, wrongly interned as a German enemy alien and deported to Australia. He made his way to India and then America, where he was reunited with his family.
He was drafted by the Army, fought in the Battle of Bulge and was at the liberation of Dachau. After Nuremberg, he became an engineer, helped develop the first computers and color TV, and worked on the first NASA moonshot.
In his 70s, he sailed across the Atlantic three times with a crew in a 44-foot boat – the last when he was 75.
I ran across Sonnenfeldt’s book while roaming the shelves of Reader’s Corner, a great second-hand bookstore on Hillsborough Street near N.C. State in Raleigh. You should check it out.