Litnet

(for Richard Wolfgang Sonnenfeldt, 23/7/1923 – 09/10/2009)

In my life I craved the words Richard said
to Jewish parents English meant safety
In his time he had Höss plead to the dead

Living ghosts of Dachau filling his head
eyes raking corpses disbelievingly
In my life I craved the words Richard said

Lulled by the English he had learned at Kent
war colonels confessed to his fluency
In his time he had Höss plead to the dead

The words of my husband filled them with dread
he startled, harried and tricked cunningly
In my life I craved the words Richard said

“Goering ordered the Holocaust,” he said
“the bastard admitted it knowingly”
In his time he had Höss plead to the dead

“I leave you the moon”, kissing my forehead
My darling rage, rage, do not go gently
In my life I craved the words Richard said
In his time he had Höss plead to the dead

• Richard Sonnenfeldt (86) saw the horrors of Nazi concentration camps when he helped liberate prisoners at Dachau and later became chief American interpreter and interrogator at Nuremberg. His wife, Barbara, told Associated Press her husband died of complications following a stroke. Sonnenfeldt was a German-born Jew whose command of English and German was noticed while he served in the US Army. In later life, as an electrical engineer, he helped develop colour television and computers for the moon landings. In his memoir, Witness to Nuremberg (2006), he said that in other circumstances, many of the prisoners might have been taken for ordinary men, but as he read their indictments, “I envisioned anew the stacks of pitiful corpses and gagged once again on the smell of assembly line extermination these men and their cohorts had unleashed.” http://www.economist.com/node/14743425