In March 1938, paramilitary groups in leather boots and brown uniforms marched through the streets of Vienna, celebrating the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. As part of Adolf Hitler’s Sturmabteilung (SA), they humiliated an old woman by hanging a sign reading \u201cI am a Jewish pig\u201d around her neck. A man pushed through the crowd to help her, and a fist fight ensued. The man, Albert G\u00f6ring, was lucky to have survived. Resistance against the Nazis was dangerous at the time, and he ended up in prison. However, due to his name, he didn’t stay behind bars for long. Albert G\u00f6ring was the brother of Hermann G\u00f6ring, the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe and one of Hitler’s closest confidants.<\/p>\n
Hermann and Albert G\u00f6ring were two brothers who couldn’t be more different. Hermann was power-hungry and narcissistic, while Albert was a charming bon vivant who opposed the Nazis. While Hermann was already Hitler’s supporter in 1922, Albert had no political ambitions of his own and rejected the National Socialist ideology and its brutality. The mechanical engineer Albert moved to Vienna in 1929 and entered the film industry in the early 1930s as technical director at Tobis-Sascha Filmindustrie AG. He was concerned about developments in Germany, where the Nazis persecuted and dehumanized Jews and political opponents.<\/p>\n
Albert helped actress Henny Porten get a role in a film, as she was no longer able to work in Germany because she refused to leave her Jewish husband. He also intervened when the Gestapo came to arrest his former boss, Oskar Pilzer, and personally accompanied him to the Italian border. This wasn’t the only time Albert helped others escape. He forged documents, organized escape routes, and provided refugees with money. His last name was often intimidating to many Nazi officials. He also supported the composer Franz Leh\u00e1r, whose wife Sophie was Jewish, by asking Hermann to register their marriage as a \u201cprivileged mixed marriage\u201d and thus save Sophie from being deported to a concentration camp.<\/p>\n
Albert often enlisted the help of his powerful older brother for these rescue operations. Despite his ruthlessness as a politician, Hermann was lenient towards his family. Hermann had a clear hierarchy: he came first, followed by his family, the fatherland, National Socialism, and Hitler. He was like the godfather of the family, giving in to his own ego but also acting on behalf of his family and helping his brother. In 1939, Albert was appointed export director of the Skoda works in Brno in what was then Czechoslovakia, which was under Nazi occupation.<\/p>\n
Albert lived up to the expectations of the Czechs, standing up for them and actively supporting the Czech resistance by passing on secret information. He had access to this information through his business contacts and through his brother. According to eyewitness accounts, Albert continued to help others escape the Nazi regime. He picked up Jewish prisoners from the Theresienstadt concentration camp to do \u201cwar-necessary\u201d work in the Skoda factories. However, his actions became more and more ruthless, and he was targeted by the Gestapo for a long time and was ultimately declared an enemy of the state.<\/p>\n
The brothers’ loyalty remained unchanged. After the collapse of the Third Reich, both men were imprisoned. During interrogations, Albert refused to speak ill of Hermann and praised what he called his \u201cwarm-heartedness.\u201d Americans didn’t believe that Albert wasn’t a Nazi himself. The same name that enabled him to save people ultimately contributed to his own downfall. It was a curse. On September 19, 1945, U.S. investigator Paul Kubala wrote: "The results of the interrogation of Albert G\u00f6ring… represent as clever a piece of rationalization and ‘whitewashing’ as the SAIC (Seventh Army Interrogation Center) has ever seen."<\/p>\n
The \u201cthirty-four\u201d in William Hastings Burke’s book title refers to the 34 names that Albert G\u00f6ring listed in alphabetical order and described as \u201cpeople whose lives I saved at my own risk (three Gestapo arrest warrants!).\u201d No one ever tried to look for the people on Albert’s list – even though it also included high-profile names. However, things changed for Albert when a new interrogator took over his case: Victor Parker was the nephew of Sophie L\u00e9har, who was also on Albert’s list. While Hermann G\u00f6ring committed suicide the night before his scheduled execution, Albert G\u00f6ring was released. But \u201cbecause of his name, he was a pariah in his own country.\u201d After the war, Albert could not find a job as an engineer and lived from odd jobs and translations. A social outcast, he was shunned until his death in 1966 at the age of 71.<\/p>\n
William Hastings Burke has been obsessed with the story of Albert G\u00f6ring since he first heard it on a television report. Burke traveled to Europe looking for material about Albert G\u00f6ring, combing through archives and meeting former employees or relatives of people whom Albert had helped. He even tracked down his grave. Burke says, \u201cI thought I had to tell the world about this man.\u201d His book may have been published in 2015, but Albert G\u00f6ring is still fresh in his mind. For him, Albert is a role model: "Albert was a man who stood up to this regime. But after the war, he didn’t go and tell the world about it. It wasn’t about fame for him, he just kept his humanity." Burke submitted a request to the Yad Vashem Memorial to add Albert Goering to the Righteous Among the Nations list, hoping it will be granted one day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction to Albert G\u00f6ring In March 1938, paramilitary groups in leather boots and brown uniforms marched through the streets of Vienna, celebrating the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. As part of Adolf Hitler’s Sturmabteilung (SA), they humiliated an old woman by hanging a sign reading \u201cI am a Jewish pig\u201d around her neck. A<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[655,17869,17876,6691,2386,17883,17880,17873,1644,3790,11795,17872,3225,17874,7007,425,17870,3707,9041,653,427,17877,17882,17878,17885,17871,17875,15926,17879,17881,426,17884],"class_list":{"0":"post-26782","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lifestyle","8":"tag-adolf-hitler","9":"tag-albert-goring","10":"tag-brno","11":"tag-czechoslovakia","12":"tag-czechs","13":"tag-edmund-burke","14":"tag-enemy-of-the-state","15":"tag-franz-lehar","16":"tag-german-empire","17":"tag-gestapo","18":"tag-godparent","19":"tag-henny-porten","20":"tag-hermann-goring","21":"tag-interfaith-marriage","22":"tag-internment","23":"tag-jews","24":"tag-luftwaffe","25":"tag-mechanical-engineering","26":"tag-narcissism","27":"tag-nazi-germany","28":"tag-nazism","29":"tag-occupation-of-czechoslovakia-1938-1945","30":"tag-outcast-person","31":"tag-resistance-in-the-protectorate-of-bohemia-and-moravia","32":"tag-righteous-among-the-nations","33":"tag-sascha-film","34":"tag-skoda-works","35":"tag-sturmabteilung","36":"tag-theresienstadt-ghetto","37":"tag-united-states-army-europe-and-africa","38":"tag-vienna","39":"tag-yad-vashem"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26784,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26782\/revisions\/26784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}