Richard Wolfgang Sonnenfeldt (23 July 1923 Berlin, Germany – 9 October 2009, Port Washington, New York) was a Jewish American engineer and corporate executive most notable for being the U.S. prosecution team's chief interpreter in 1945 prior to the Nuremberg Trial after World War II.
(His brother, Helmut, not treated as an enemy alien because he was under age 16, obtained passage from England to the U.S. Their parents escaped from Germany to Sweden and made it from there to the U.S.) In the U.S., Sonnenfeldt finished high school, was drafted into the U.S. Army, and became a U.S. citizen.
("Wild Bill") Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), recruited Sonnenfeldt to be his personal interpreter because he spoke both German and English fluently.
Donovan soon became the first deputy of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who had been appointed by President Truman to serve as U.S. Chief of Counsel for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals.
In his subsequent careers, he was part of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) team that invented color television, involved in work for NASA on the Moon landings, a senior executive at the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the dean of a business school, and inventor and holder of many patents, among other things.