Who Peter Less?

Answer 1

A man named Peter Less was an interpreter at the Nuremberg trials after WWII. He fled Germany at the age of 17 in 1938 and moved to Switzerland, but his family refused to follow. They all perished during the war. Less was trained at the Geneva School of Conference Interpretation and was chosen as one of the 30-40 interpreters at the trials. He was one of the interpreters at the major war criminals' trial, that of Hermann Goering and Rudolph Hess, among others. When asked in an interview by interpreter Tanya Gesse in 2005 how he could sit in the same room with the men responsible for death of his family, Less said, "It wasn't easy. You were sitting in the same room with the people who probably killed your parents, but you could not let your feelings interfere with your job. You swore to interpret as faithfully as possible, to put the speaker's idea into the listener's head. So we did." Less currently lives in Chicago, where he practices family law. You can read Gesse's article about her interview with Less at the following web site: http://www.aiic.net/ViewPage.cfm/article1277.htm