Leon Goldensohn | |
|---|---|
| Born | Leon Goldensohn October 19, 1911 New York City |
| Died | October 24, 1961 (aged 50) |
| Occupation | Psychiatrist |
Leon N. Goldensohn (October 19, 1911 – October 24, 1961) was an Americanpsychiatrist who monitored the mental health of the twenty-oneNazi defendants during thetrial at Nuremberg in 1946.
Born on October 19, 1911, inNew York City, Goldensohn was the son of Jewish emigrés from Lithuania.[1] He obtained his psychoanalytic training at theWilliam Alanson White Institute,[2] and then joined theUnited States Army in 1943. Goldensohn was posted to France and Germany, where he served as a psychiatrist for the63rd Division. At Nuremberg, Goldensohn replaced another psychiatrist,Douglas Kelley, in January 1946, about six weeks into the trials, and spent more than six months visiting the prisoners nearly every day.[3] He interviewed most of the defendants, includingHermann Göring andJoachim von Ribbentrop, theForeign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945.[4] Goldensohn conducted most of his interviews in English with the aid of an interpreter to have the defendants and witnesses express themselves fully in their own language, with the objective of evaluating and observing but not of treating them.[5] Some of his subjects, notably von Ribbentrop, who had been ambassador to the United Kingdom, andGroßadmiralKarl Dönitz,[6] were partially or fully fluent in English, and conducted their interviews in that language.
Goldensohn served as prison psychiatrist until July 26, 1946. He had resolved to write a book about the experience but later contracted tuberculosis and died from acoronary heart attack in 1961 before accomplishing the book project. The detailed notes he took were later researched and collated by his brother Eli (1916–2013), a retired neurologist.Robert Gellately, a World War II scholar, edited and annotated the interviews in the 2004 bookThe Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist's Conversations with the Defendants and Witnesses.[1]
After the war, Goldensohn kept his papers at his New York City office-apartment and his home inTenafly, New Jersey.[7] He and his wife, Irene ("Renee") had three children, Max, Daniel, and Julia.[8]
