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Sakheim, George A. (32861841): Difference between revisions

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|photo=6041601682528369.jpg
|photo=6041601682528369.jpg
|death_date=5 December 2019
|death_date=5 December 2019
|birth_place=Hamburg, Germany
|rank_final=First Lieutenant
|birth_date=12 June 1923
|death_place=Lansdale, Pennsylvania
|alias=Ruben Gabriel Sakheim
|division=104th Infantry Division
}}
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'''[[Sakheim, George A. (32861841)|George A. Sakheim]]''' (1923 – 5 December 2019) was a Ritchie Boy (from Germany; Jewish) who trained at Camp Ritchie in class 16 and served with IPW Team 13.
'''[[Sakheim, George A. (32861841)|George A. Sakheim]]''' (12 June 1923 – 5 December 2019), born Ruben Gabriel Sakheim, was a Hamburg-born Ritchie Boy (Class 16) who interrogated in northwest Europe and interpreted at the Nuremberg trials.
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== Biography ==
== Biography ==
George worked as a career was as Clinical Psychologist. He served as member of IPW Team 13. [[Sakheim, George A. (32861841)|George Sakheim]] was a Ritchie Boy. He passed away December 5, 2019. He kept a journal and never stopped testifying about the experience. Sakheim, 96, of Gwynedd, a translator at the Nuremberg Trials who came face to face with some of Nazi Germany’s most notorious war criminals, died Thursday, Dec. 5, of pneumonia at Abington Lansdale Hospital. Sakheim had just served two years in the Army in Europe and was stationed in Paris, expecting to go home, when he saw a flier asking for German-speaking interpreters to work at the approaching Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. “I had a conflict, because I really was anxious to get back to college, but then something in me, even at 22, realized that this was going to be historic, it was going to be exciting and unique,” he told the Jewish Exponent in a 2015 article marking the 70th anniversary of the trials. Sakheim volunteered and was immediately flown to Nuremberg. For the next seven months, he had the extraordinary chance to see and hear Nazi leaders, including Field Marshal Hermann Goering and Rudolph Hoess, commandant of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. Sakheim did much of his work from an adjoining room, but when in the courtroom, he recorded his impressions in a journal. One was to hold the perpetrators accountable for atrocities committed against the Jews. “The second,” he was quoted as saying in the Exponent, “had to do with [[Jackson, Robert C. (01324021)|Robert Jackson]], the chief U.S. prosecutor for the trials, saying these trials exist so that something like this will never happen again.” Born in Hamburg, Germany, Dr. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and had just enrolled at Columbia University when he was drafted into the Army in March 1943. Because he could speak German, Dr. Sakheim was sent for military intelligence training. His division helped with the storming of Normandy on D-Day Plus 7, and he was present at the liberation of concentrations camps at Aachen and Cologne. He recalled seeing Allied generals shaking their heads and pressing handkerchiefs to their noses to mask the smell of unburied bodies. After an internship at Bellevue Hospital in New York, he earned a Ph.D in clinical psychology at Florida State University in 1954. Sakheim worked as a psychologist for many years in Maine and then New York. Later, he created a tool to quantify risk factors for juvenile arsonists. He wrote the 1994 book Firesetting Children. Sakheim was active in the civil rights and anti-war movements.
Ruben Gabriel Sakheim was born on 12 June 1923 in Hamburg, Germany. After his father’s death the family moved to Berlin, then fled to Palestine in 1933; he reached New York in 1938, took the name George A. Sakheim, and enrolled at Columbia before the Army drafted him in March 1943.
 
Naturalized in November 1943, he trained at Camp Ritchie (Class 16) and served with IPW Team 13 / the 104th Infantry Division, landing in Normandy about a week after D-Day and interrogating prisoners as the division moved east. In April 1945 he was among U.S. troops at the Dora-Mittelbau camp at Nordhausen. After VE-Day he volunteered as a German–English interpreter at Nuremberg, working interrogations and courtroom translation for about seven months, including sessions involving Hermann Göring and Rudolf Höss.
 
He later earned psychology degrees at Columbia and a Ph.D. at Florida State University, practiced as a clinical psychologist, and wrote on firesetting children. He died on 5 December 2019 near Gwynedd / Lansdale, Pennsylvania.


== Research notes ==
== Research notes ==
* ASTP Nuremberg
* ASTP Nuremberg
* http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/The-Nuremberg-Diary-434645
 
== Gallery ==
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Sakheim_George_A_32861841_ShowImage.jpg|George A. Sakheim (RB Archive ShowImage)
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== Technical record ==
== Technical record ==
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* November 1943 — Became naturalized citizen.
* 12 June 1923 — Born Ruben Gabriel Sakheim in Hamburg.
* 7 September 1944 — Division landed at Cherbourg.
* 1933 — Family fled Berlin for Palestine; to New York 1938 as George A. Sakheim.
* Assigned to HQ Company, 413th Regiment of 104th Infantry Division.
* March 1943 — Drafted; Columbia interrupted.
* November 1943 — Naturalized U.S. citizen.
* 5 April 1944 — Graduated Camp Ritchie Class 16; IPW Team 13 / 104th Infantry Division.
* June 1944 onward — Normandy (D+7); northwest Europe interrogations; Dora-Mittelbau, April 1945.
* 1945–1946 — Interpreter / translator, Nuremberg trials (~seven months).
* Postwar — Columbia degrees; Ph.D., Florida State (1954); clinical psychology career.
* 5 December 2019 — Died, Lansdale / Gwynedd, Pennsylvania area.
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== Sources ==
== Sources ==
* [[:File:Sakheim_George_A_32861841_ShowImage.jpg|George A. Sakheim portrait / photo]]
* [https://www.jewishexponent.com/ Jewish Exponent — 2015 Nuremberg anniversary interview (as cited in secondary coverage)]
* [https://www.inquirer.com/obituaries/george-sakheim-translator-nuremberg-trials-world-war-psychologist-died-20191217.html Philadelphia Inquirer — George Sakheim obituary]
* [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/world/europe/george-sakheim-dead.html New York Times — George Sakheim, Interpreter at Nuremberg Trials, Dies at 96 (27 December 2019)]
* [http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/The-Nuremberg-Diary-434645 Jerusalem Post — The Nuremberg Diary]
* Camp Ritchie Museum, Inc. (The Ritchie History Museum), Classes 1–31 roster data
* Camp Ritchie Museum, Inc. (The Ritchie History Museum), Classes 1–31 roster data
* Dan Gross research spreadsheets, including original Excel timeline/roster work, combined with other research and records
* Dan Gross research spreadsheets, including original Excel timeline/roster work, combined with other research and records
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* 1940 U.S. Census (where a census match is present)
* 1940 U.S. Census (where a census match is present)
* Ritchie Boys of WWII Facebook page, post dated 2023-01-12 (1 post)
* Ritchie Boys of WWII Facebook page, post dated 2023-01-12 (1 post)
* Dan Gross, ''Timeline of George A. Sakheim for Camp Ritchie'' (private research document; 2 source documents reviewed)
* Dan Gross, ''Timeline of Sakheim, George A. for Camp Ritchie'' (private research files; selected non-private narrative findings; 2 source files: GEORGE A. SAKHEIM (2021).doc, GEORGE A. SAKHEIM.doc)
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