Göring's List: Should Israel Honor a Leading Nazi's Brother?

[Valin]

SPIEGEL Online

Gerhard Spörl

March 07, 2013

 

Hermann Göring's younger brother Albert, of all people, rescued Jews from the Nazis, and yet his story is forgotten. But why?

 

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It is important to her to set something straight right away. It really doesn't matter to her, she says, what someone's name was or what rank he had at the time, if he had rescued only one or several Jews and had proven himself to be a good person at a bad time. The true heroes, who remain good throughout their lives, are extremely rare, she says, and they certainly didn't exist at the time of the Holocaust.

 

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Albert Göring was the opposite of his brother. He hated the Nazis, and he said early on that Hitler would mean war and ruin. He didn't join the Nazi Party, and he despised his brother for bowing to Hitler. He distanced himself from Germany, first going to Austria, where he took Austrian citizenship. After the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany, he moved to Prague, and from there to Budapest and Bucharest. Wherever he went, he helped those in desperate need, both before and during the war.

 

On the few occasions that the Göring brothers saw each other in the 12 years between the Nazi takeover and Germany's surrender to the Allies, it was at family gatherings. But Albert needed Hermann, and he also used him. He would have been lost without his brother. Without his support, the Gestapo -- which knew exactly what Albert Göring was doing and with whom he associated -- would have arrested and executed him.

 

The Göring brothers remained loyal to each other. He is my brother, Hermann would say, reminding the Gestapo thugs that family members were off-limits. The madness of the Nazi era could easily be told from the perspective of these two brothers. Their relationship offers tremendous material for a double biography and, of course, a movie. Contemporary witnesses who are still alive today include family members who knew both men: Albert's great-nieces, Hermann's only daughter and Albert's only daughter.

 

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[Valin]

Amidst the giddy chaos of Berlin, Hitler toys with death in his bunker. The golden boy of Nazism, Hermann Göring, looks set to succeed as Führer. But his bid for power ends with a cyanide capsule in a gaol cell in Nuremberg. And there history signs off on Hermann. Yet buried in the footnotes sits the extraordinary story of Hermann Göring's little brother, Albert.

A defiant anti-Nazi, Albert Göring spent the war years busting the persecuted out of concentration camps, smuggling them across borders and funnelling aid to refugees throughout Europe. He did everything to undermine his brother's regime. But by 1944 the Gestapo were hunting him down like a dog. Did Hermann step in and save his brother?

Enter William, a twentysomething from Sydney, Australia, who stumbles upon the tattered pieces of Albert's history. Shelving plans for a Ph.D., William sets off on a three year odyssey across eight countries and three continents to piece together the puzzling life of Albert Göring.