A Holocaust Survivor’s Role in Nazi War Crime Trials | Edith Coliver | USC Shoah Foundation — Transcript

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1. 0:00INT: Other than Justice Jackson, were there any other people you
2. 0:04came to meet face-to-face who were--
3. 0:06EC: Oh, yes.
4. 0:06Lots.
5. 0:07You know, we were 800 people in the--
6. 0:09in the-- in the prosecution.
7. 0:11I was saying prostitution.
8. 0:12In the prosecution.
9. 0:14And we became very close, you know.
10. 0:16It's like being on a ship.
11. 0:18You know each other within four-- four hours,
12. 0:21and you become fast friends for life.
13. 0:24INT: Which defendants first did you see?
14. 0:26EC: Well, I saw Goring.
15. 0:28I was interpreting for him.
16. 0:29He was the number-one man in Germany after--
17. 0:34after Hitler.
18. 0:35And he looked terrible, because he had been on drugs,
19. 0:38and they took his drugs away.
20. 0:40So he was in withdrawal and lost about 100 pounds.
21. 0:45And he wasn't particularly thrilled
22. 0:47to have a female and a Jew as an interpreter.
23. 0:52But we were there, in the interpreting room.
24. 0:54And I did something that I regretted very much afterwards.
25. 0:58We had a book on--
26. 1:01I have the-- the Xerox here.
27. 1:02We had a book on Nuremberg, on the building,
28. 1:05on the people, and all that.
29. 1:07And I asked him to autograph his picture for me.
30. 1:11And then afterwards, I went out and thought,
31. 1:13my god, why did I give this man the honor of autographing a--
32. 1:21a book?
33. 1:23So then I felt ashamed of myself.
34. 1:25And I went to my then boss, a man who had
35. 1:28been asked to go to Germany.
36. 1:32His name was Kempner, Robert Kempner, to--
37. 1:38because supposedly there was an aura about him, supposing he
38. 1:41knew about the teeth of Hitler.
39. 1:46And Hitler had committed suicide the day before the Allies--
40. 1:52I mean, Germany surrendered to the Allies.
41. 1:55And so-- and he came under this aura, and he-- he
42. 2:01became the head of my division.
43. 2:03And so I said, write me something, because I'm
44. 2:05ashamed about this signature.
45. 2:08And so he wrote under it, to Edith Simon,
46. 2:12who helped hang the same.
47. 2:15Well, first place, I didn't help.
48. 2:16In the second place, we didn't know whether Goring
49. 2:18was going to be hanged.
50. 2:20And Goring actually didn't want to be hanged.
51. 2:23He wanted to be shot, like a soldier.
52. 2:25But the soldiers were hanged, too, the-- the generals.
53. 2:29And so he was hanged.
54. 2:31I mean, Goring was not hanged, because he cheated the gallows,
55. 2:34as you know, and killed himself during the--
56. 2:38during the night of the hanging.
57. 2:40And I was with the journalists in the-- in the press room.
58. 2:45And when the security chief of the--
59. 2:48of the prison came up, he looked awful.
60. 2:54And we thought he was going to announce that the executions
61. 2:56had been completed.
62. 2:59He said, the defendant, Goring, has cheated the gallows
63. 3:06by doing away with himself.
64. 3:09All the journalists ran to their telephones and stuff.
65. 3:12They had-- that was headlines.
66. 3:14I mean, Goring was always the one who was most in the news.
67. 3:18And then in the subsequent years,
68. 3:20people were trying to figure out,
69. 3:21how could he get the poison.
70. 3:23He killed himself with cyanide.
71. 3:26And books were written about how could he kill himself.
72. 3:30There was such security.
73. 3:33And then somebody came up with a theory,
74. 3:35which was not really very well proven,
75. 3:38that he had hidden a poison cap, a capsule,
76. 3:45a-- a cyanide capsule in--
77. 3:49[PAUSES FOR 3 SECONDS] in-- salve.
78. 3:55I don't mean to say salve.
79. 3:56In a lotion.
80. 3:59Face-- face lotion.
81. 4:02And he had it among his personal belongings.
82. 4:07And he asked one of the guards.
83. 4:09He wanted his [NON-ENGLISH],, his--
84. 4:12his case.
85. 4:14They gave it to him.
86. 4:16And then he killed himself.
87. 4:17His timing was absolutely flawless.
88. 4:21And then I think I mentioned before that the psychiatrist--
89. 4:25there were two.
90. 4:26There was a psychiatrist and a psychologist
91. 4:29interviewing and doing Rorschach tests
92. 4:32on all of our 21 defendants.
93. 4:35And actually, he said about Goring
94. 4:38that the Rorschach test was black, and on it was a red dot.
95. 4:44And Goring flipped it off, tried to flip it off.
96. 4:49And so the interpretation was that he wanted to get out
97. 4:53from under the indictment.
98. 4:55But anyway, [PAUSES FOR 3 SECONDS] the--
99. 4:59[PAUSES FOR 3 SECONDS] the two books
100. 5:03were written about that, as I said.
101. 5:05One of them was written by Douglas Kelley,
102. 5:07the psychiatrist.
103. 5:09And it was called 21 Cells.
104. 5:12And he came-- he was from the Bay Area.
105. 5:14And he came back here, and he gave talks
106. 5:16about Nuremberg and about the tests and about all
107. 5:19of-- for two years.
108. 5:20And then he killed himself with the same poison
109. 5:24that Goring had killed himself.