A note on the questionable role of court interpreters in the Nuremberg Trials

by Dr. Rafael Andrs Escribano rafael.andres.escribano@gmail.com [ Note by the author: This note was submitted to Proteus, the newsletter of the National Asociation of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators (NAJIT) circa 1999 and was rejected by the then Editor. Shortly after submission, this interpreter was suspended by the then Coordinator of Interpreter Services of the Trial Courts of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. ] Holly Mikkelson (Director of the International Interpretation Resource Center at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a member of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators Board of Directors) starts her review of Francesca Gaibas The Origins of Simultaneous Interpretation: The Nuremberg Trial, with the following paragraph: <<Throughout my professional life, I've heard interpreters describe the Nuremberg Trial as the cradle of modern conference interpreting, the first instance of simultaneous interpreting with electronic equipment. Apart from a few isolated articles in the occasional translator/interpreter publication, very little has been written about these pioneer interpreters and the system that was devised to make a four-language trial possible. Francesca Gaibas work puts an end to this relative obscurity, shedding new light on a historic event that would otherwise have receded into the darkness of the forgotten past as the key players died, one by one.>> (http://www.najit.org/proteus/v9n1-2/mikkelson_v9n1-2.htm) One of those key players, now in his eighties, was Richard W. Sonnenfeldt, who was Chief Interpreter for the U.S. Prosecution and Interrogator at the Nuremberg Trials according to the Council on Foreign Relations, of which he is himself a member, and for which institution as recently as May 6, 1999 he gave a lecture whose title was The Nuremberg Trials. (http://www.cfr.org/meetarchive.php?meety=1999&loc=1) A Google search on Richard W. Sonnenfeldt gives 563 results, most in German but some interesting ones in English. On July 6, 1946, according to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Brigadier General Robert J. Gill, U.S. Army, sent a memorandum to the commanding general of the U.S. forces in Europe, recommending Sonnenfeldt, then 23 years old, to be decorated for his services as chief interpreter at the Nuremberg trials of the major Nazi war criminals. (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/pubs/spectrum/0700/prof.html#sb1)

The organization of the Nuremberg Trials of the leading surviving members of the German National Socialist Party was in the hands of General William Wild Bill Donovan, the Head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the elite secret operations organization which after WWII would become, in the U.S., the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The IEEE profile of Sonnenfeldt, of which he became a Fellow in 1962, describes his general role in the Nuremberg Trials as follows: <<In May 1945, Donovan was charged with the unprecedented job of organizing criminal trials of the Nazi leadership. He at once hired Sonnenfeldt, who soon found himself at Nuremberg, setting up a team of interpreters for the American prosecution. His main job was to interpret when a prisoner or witness was being interrogated. The interviews took place in one of 10 rooms, with the witness facing the window and illuminated by sunlight, the interrogators opposite in the shadows. As he gained the confidence of the prosecutors, he increasingly acted as an informal partner in the interrogation, and would even suggest lines of questioning. There often were opportunities for casual conversation with prisoners and witnesses as they were being brought in or out.>> (ibid) Now, this alleged behavior of Chief Interpreter Richard W. Sonnenfeldt seems to be at odds, to say the least, with that crucial requirement of the court interpreters protocol called impartiality. Heres the first thing that the Professional Ethics and the Role of the Court Interpreter (published online by the California Courts) says about impartiality: <<IMPARTIALITY A court interpreter should disclose to the judge and to all parties any actual or apparent conflict of interest. Any condition that interferes with the objectivity of an interpreter constitutes a conflict of interest. A conflict may exist if the interpreter is acquainted with or related to any witness or party to the action or if the interpreter has an interest in the outcome of the case. An interpreter should not engage in conduct creating the appearance of bias, prejudice, or partiality. This statement is self-explanatory, but it is worth emphasizing the term appearance here. Even though you may not feel that you have any bias or partiality, if other people perceive that you are biased or partial, your role as interpreter is compromised. Therefore, you must strive to avoid any situation in which it might appear that you favored one side or the other in a case. >> (Professional Ethics and the Role of the Court Interpreter, 3d Edition, p. 17: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/programs/courtinterpreters/documents/ethicsma.pdf) And given this, the book goes on, under the title CONFLICT OF INTEREST, to explain the conditions under which the interpreter should excuse himself from working in a case:

<<CONFLICT OF INTEREST Real conflicts A conflict of interest exists when the interpreter has a personal interest in the outcome of the case, is a friend or relative of one of the litigants, or stands to benefit financially from the results of the case because he or she is a partner or associate of one of the parties in the matter before the court. Potential conflicts There may be times when the evidence presented, whether oral or pictorial, may offend your personal sensitivities or be of such graphic nature that you may be incapable of controlling your emotional reactions. If you find yourself in such a position, you should immediately inform the court. Any condition which impinges on the objectivity of the interpreter or affects his professional independence constitutes a conflict of interest (Los Angeles Superior Court Interpreters Manual, 1981, p. 7). There may also be a possible conflict of interest if you are acquainted with or related to a potential juror or a juror already sitting in the case at bar. Whenever any of these conditions exist, you should not accept the assignment. To accept it would harm your professional reputation and would create a bad image for the entire profession. If after you have accepted an assignment you become aware of a conflict of interest, you should immediately inform the court; the judge will determine whether a conflict of interest exists and whether you should be disqualified. >> (p. 17, ibid Words in bold appear in bold in the original.) Less than a year before his assignment as Chief Interpreter and, actually, as interrogator of the prisoners, defendants, and witnesses in the Nuremberg Trials (i.e. the leaders of the German government during WWII) Richard W. Sonnenfeldt had been actively participating as a specialized soldier in an open war against them <<in Africa, Italy, and France, participating in the Battle of the Bulge, and taking part in the invasion of Germany as a member of an armored reconnaissance unit>> (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/pubs/spectrum/0700/prof.html#sb1) and, towards the end of that period, as a member of OSS Head William Wild Bill Donovans team that continued the war after the war, through secret operations. It would be difficult for such a man to be impartial not only as interpreter but even more so as Chief Interpreter of the prisoners, defendants and witnesses of the Nuremberg Trials. Furthermore, Sonnenfeldt was the son of Jewish parents and a practicing Jew himself, a fact that would hardly add to his impartiality or lack of conflict of interest towards those prisoners, defendants, and witnesses. It should be no surprise although perhaps it should that none other than Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, then Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and, as such, boss of the Chief

American Prosecutor at Nuremberg, would have this to say about the Nuremberg Trials and its Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson in particular: <<Jackson is away conducting his high grade lynching party in Nuremberg," [Stone] remarked. "I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. "This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas.">> (From Alpheus Thomas Masons Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law, Viking Press, p. 746) Expanding on this U.S. Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone says: <<For your information, but not for publication as coming from me, I would like to advise you that the Supreme Court had nothing to do, either directly or indirectly, with the Nuremberg Trials, or the governmental action which authorized them. I was not advised of Justice Jackson's participation until his appointment by the Executive was announced in the newspapers. "So far as the Nuremberg trial is an attempt to justify the application of the power of the victor to the vanquished because the vanquished made aggressive war," (Stone) explained, "I dislike extremely to see it dressed up with a false facade of legality. The best that can be said for it is that it is a political act of the victorious States, which may be morally right, as was the sequestration of Napoleon about 1815. But the allies in that day did not feel it necessary to justify it by an appeal to nonexistent legal principles. As a practical matter, it seems to me that the difficulties and uncertainties of saying who is the aggressor under the conditions which produce modern war should make us hesitate to lay down for the future a principle which would always require that question to be answered by the victor. All wars are in fact aggressive. The real source of authority is the powers of the victors over the vanquished. "It would not disturb me greatly," he wrote, "if that power were openly and frankly used to punish the German leaders for being a bad lot, but it disturbs me some to have it dressed up in the habiliments of the Common Law and the constitutional safeguards to those charged with crime. It looks as though we were committing ourselves to the proposition that the outcome of every war must be that the leaders of the vanquished must be executed by the victors.">> (From Alpheus Thomas Masons Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law, Viking Press, p. 715) And executed they were, in spite of, and perhaps thanks to, the serious partiality and conflict of interest of the Chief Interpreter in the Nuremberg Trials, Richard W. Sonnenfeldt.

Rather than setting a model for post-WWII court interpretation in the United States or anywhere else, the actions of the interpreter team in the Nuremberg Trials, lead by their Chief Interpreter and OSS agent Richard W. Sonnenfeldt, should be a wake up call for the ethical court interpreter as to the origins of the perverted practices so common in our courts today and, in particular, of the endemic perversion of the sacred oath of the court interpreter. Rafael Andrs Escribano is a linguist and can be reached at rafael.andres.escribano@gmail.com