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Volume 19, Fall 2006
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Nuremberg Trials 60th Anniversary
Translations at the International Military Tribunal
A major practical problem that arose in designing the international tribunal was the question of translations.
Reproduction of documents at Nuremberg
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The court had assembled an ample number of translators, six interpreters, twelve translators, nine stenographers for each of the four languages, totaling 108 people, involved with the simultaneous translation process and dealing with the enormous amount of time needed to carry out these activities. In an ordinary trial in which a witness is called to testify in a foreign language, a court interpreter translates any questions put to the witness and the answers of the witness, a slow and tedious process. Threats of delay was far greater at Nuremberg where every documents offered into evidence and every statement made in court had to be put into German, French, English, and Russian.
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| Full Set of Documents for Evidence File NO-208 |
Justice Jackson, the Chief Prosecutor for the Americans, was appalled at the prospect of time needed to fulfill these activities. He sent two of his officials to Washington to investigate the feasibility of an instantaneous translation system. International Business Machines (IBM) developed and installed the system at Nuremberg without charge.
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| Translators |
To read more about the translations
Initially, professional translators greatly objected to the proposed system. They disliked the anonymity of being placed in an interpreter's cage and criticized the speed that was required of them. Colonel Leon Dostert, the Chief of Interpreters, however, believed in the new system and set about to train interpreters as well as judges and lawyers in ways to work with the system.
Whitney Harris, a member of the American prosecution staff at Nuremberg, succinctly described the translation system in his account of the International Military Tribunal entitled Tyranny on Trial:
The plan called for an elaborate telephonic installation. From the microphones at the lawyers' lectern, the witness box, and the judges' bench, wires ran to the central interpreters' booth. Whatever was said on an incoming line was instantaneously translated into the other languages by wonderfully skilled interpreters. The interpretations then went into every chair in the courtroom by other telephonic wires, to be picked up through headphones for which a switch was provided to enable the listener to select the preferred language. Flashing red and yellow lights cautioned speakers to become accustomed to it, the instantaneous translation system worked admirably. It was the first time in history that such a system had been used in a judicial proceeding, or for that matter, in any hearing of such length and complexity. The same arrangement was later installed under the direction of Colonel Dostert in the United Nations. It has greatly facilitated the holding of international conferences and conventions. Whitney Harris, Tyranny on Trial, 27-8
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| Whitney Harris |
Translators and Defendants
In addition to adapting to the new technology, translators and interpreters were in a rare position to meet leading Nazi defendants and hear their testimonies.
Henry Fiss, an Austrian by birth, translated documents for an American prosecution. As a young man he had escaped Nazi Germany and returned as an American soldier. After the war he was sent to Nuremberg where he was placed in charge of all translations for the American prosecution. His work brought him in direct contact with leading perpetrators of the Nazi state. On one occasion he was asked to interrogate Otto Ohlendorff, a leader of the killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen.
I was able to talk to this SS man [Ohlendorff] who had killed I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of people, smoking a cigarette and telling me with great pride how he made this killing machine more and more effective. That was Ohlendorff.....
Fiss also interrogated Rudolf Hoess, the SS Obersturmbaunfuhrer and Commandant of Auschwitz.
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| Rudolf Hoess |
He also managed to preserve a copy of the confession signed by Hoess that he described in an unpublished book written about the trial. Mr. Booth, who is mentioned in the account, was one of Fiss's superiors at Nuremberg. During the interrogation, Booth asked Hoess about his confession, and Fiss witnessed and translated the following scenario:
I said to him [Hoess], “You told us once that you’d be willing to sign this confession,” and Hoess stared at the document and said, “Yes, but there is something wrong,” and then he pointed to the second line. “What’s wrong?” Hoess said to me, “Right here.” He moved his finger across the page. “It says here that I personally arranged the gassing of three million persons between June 1941 and the end of 1943.” “Well, isn’t that what you said?” “I’m afraid not. I said that only two million were gassed. You have to get the record straight. The rest died of other causes.” “Other causes?” “You know, the usual thing, malnutrition, dysentery, typhoid. We had an awful lot of typhoid cases.” I see,” Mr. Booth leaned back and sighed, “Okay, change it then.” He pushed the fountain pen across the table. Hoess picked up the pen, unscrewed the top and without further ado crossed out the three million and put in two million over it. Then he signed his name and then he blew on the paper until the ink was dry. I never could remember what happened afterwards. It seemed as if the very next moment Hoess was gone and the whole thing had just been an apparition, but there was the signed confession, the cigarette still smoldering in the ashtray and there we were sitting in the captor’s chair. (Fiss) |
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Volume 18, No. 1, Fall 2004
Yehuda Bauer
Volume 17, No. 2, Fall 2003
Using Testimonies for Researching and Teaching about the Holocaust--Part II
Volume 17, No.1, Spring 2003
Using Testimonies for Researching and Teaching about the Holocaust-- Part I
Volume 16, No. 1, Fall 2002
Remembrance and Commemoration of Two Catastrophes:
September 11th and the Holocaust
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