Unfortunately, it was now late in the day: the trial would open on the 20 November 1945; the courtroom was being rebuilt; and when the equipment arrived it was time to install it. The technicians had a spare amplifier, a few microphones and a lot of earphones and they rigged it all up for us to practice in an attic. We had just five days (and nights) to turn ourselves into ‘Simultaneous Interpreters’ under Dostert’s tutelage. Only one of us could practice at any one time since we had no booths, and these practice sessions covered every aspect of our brand new profession. (The institutes of learning nowadays allocate from one to four years for the teaching of the techniques necessary to achieve the required levels of competence). I shared the attic with an interesting collection of court interpreters-to-be.
There was Margo Bortlin, a tall, blonde American who was labelled the ‘Passionate Haystack’ so named partly because of the intricate structure of tresses piled on top of her head and partly because of some indiscreet rumours from the grapevine. Margot became a remarkably competent and accurate interpreter, only slightly handicapped by a voice that was unbelievably twangy and metallic, and a glass-hard American accent. She was as over-awed as the rest of us by the gadgetry before us and the first sentence she ever uttered into a microphone referred to a Nazi law as ‘backfiring’ (rueckwirkend in German), instead of being retroactive. I believe this was the only mistake Margot made at any time.
There was Tom Brown, Professor of Languages at the University of Florida. He was the most consistently successful poker player at Nuremberg. Tom achieved recognition – and as far as the long-suffering press corps was concerned, total approval – during testimony by a German who was asked if he had attended a high-level Gestapo meeting in Berlin. The German answer to this simple question ran like this: ‘My Lord, it must of course be appreciated that this happened several years ago and I must endeavour to cast my mind back very far,’ (There was no sound from Brown in the English booth) ‘a difficult task, considering the momentous events which were taking place then and afterwards,’ (still total silence from Brown), ‘but I think I can recall that on the day in question I was attending the funeral of my brother-in-arms Schmitt in Munich. It would, therefore, be a safe and reasonable assumption and statement to say that I could not have attended the meeting in Berlin.’ At which point we heard the translation from the English booth ‘No, my Lord!’ – it was greatly appreciated by all concerned.
There was Captain Harry Sperber of the US Army (see Plate 9). German by birth Harry became a successful cartoonist in New York. He had been one of German radio’s most popular sports commentators and, as his speciality was boxing, he had been sent to the USA to cover the Max Schmeling[1] – Joe Louis fight. Whilst in New York, and having done some of the pre-fight broadcasts for German radio, the Nazi Propaganda Ministry discovered Harry was Jewish. Goebbels was informed and had a cable sent to Sperber ordering him to withdraw from the assignment and, incredible as this may sound, to provide a suitable replacement. Sperber’s reply appeared in every newspaper around the world, excluding Germany, and it read: ‘Dr Goebbels. Goetz von Berlichingen. Sperber.’ (Goetz von Berlichingen is the knight in Goethe’s play of the same name who appears at the window of his beleaguered castle and shouts at the enemy: ‘Leck mich am Arsch’ – ‘Kiss my Arse’ words which in polite German society one did not use.
There was a pretty girl from New York, Virginia von Schon, who had grown up in the sheltered atmosphere of a truly God-fearing, Catholic German-American family. She was an extremely literary young lady, with one serious gap in her education, she knew not one ‘bad’ word – not one. A German witness for the defence was on one occasion rendering an enthusiastic account of the ‘holiday-like’ atmosphere in a concentration camp, where, he asserted: ‘They had schools, a university, library, a gymnasium, went for walks in the country and even had a…’ at which point Virginia had dried up. ‘What did the witness say, they even had?’ enquired Lord Justice Lawrence. This went back to the witness, via the German booth, and he reiterated his enthusiastic account of Himmler’s, ‘home away from home’. The third time round, the monitor, a much decorated American infantry captain, who was permanently seated outside our booths to cope with the unexpected, reached over and seized Virginia’s microphone, ‘A whorehouse, my Lord, a whorehouse,’ he explained. ‘And the Tribunal will look into the question of amending the record,’ said his Lordship in closing the incident.
One other major correction off the record became necessary when another prim young lady interpreter, lacking profanity of language, did not know what to do with the German word ‘Scheisskerle’ which means ‘Dirty Shits’ (plural). She searched her memory frantically for a dirty word and could only think of one – ‘Fucking Fellows’ she said, in impeccable King’s English. The record was amended.
There was also a phenomenon among us, Prince George Vassiltchikov an American-born direct descendant of the late Tsar of Russia. I will always remember George for three outstanding qualities: (a) he had three unbelievably beautiful sisters; (b) he became the best Russian-English Interpreter at the United Nations; and (c) he suffered from an extremely bad stammer. This, for an interpreter, would appear to be an insurmountable handicap. But George’s stammer disappeared the instant he faced a live microphone. It was an eerie thing to be listening to his linguistic stumblings one second and to hear them replaced by the smoothest possible delivery an instant later.
Back at the Palace of Justice our five days of rehearsals in the attic were soon over and the gadgets were whisked away to be installed in the courtroom. The opening of the Trial was only eleven days away. We kept reading to each other, practicing voice control, delivery, syntax, grammar, vocabulary, reading documents, hearing lectures by attorneys, and helping
Dostert set up the teams. He had wisely decided and decreed that a team could not work longer than an hour and a half at any one stretch. He had made up three teams; A, B and C. Team A would work the morning session, starting at 09.30 hours and continue until the morning recess at 11.00 hours. During that time, Team B would be sitting in an adjoining room – number 606, I remember – listening to the proceedings in the courtroom, thus ensuring complete continuity of terminology and awareness of what had been happening. Team C, on that day would be resting. On the following day, Team B would start, and C, as listeners, would pick up the vocabulary. Team A would be free, and so the rotation would continue. Each team had twelve interpreters, three per language, except for the Russians who ran their own show and never joined us in room 606, or anywhere else, for that matter.
This arrangement had the additional advantage of ensuring a three-day weekend for two out of three teams, one being off duty on Friday, the other on Monday, the third on the following weekend. Later, after we had overcome our initial stage fright and almost unbearable nervous tension, the working hours arranged by Dostert were the maximum of what we could do.[1]
1
Maximilian Schmeling (1905-2005) was a German former world heavy-weight boxing champion who fought American Joe Louis in New York in 1938 for the world title. Because of their national associations the fight became a worldwide cultural event. Louis won by knocking Schmeling out in the first round – an event that did not please Adolf Hitler or the Nazi Party.
2
At times ‘Dostert broke his shift system to take advantage of Frank’s outstanding qualities as an interpreter’ (Ann and John Tusa,