The Evil One’s Good Brother

Albert Goring (1895-1966) was a very successful German businessman who helped Jews and others to survive in Germany during World War II.
He was the younger brother of the war criminal, Hermann Goring, head of the Luftwaffe (airforce) and a leading major member of the Nazi party, extremely close to Adolf Hitler.

In their childhood their father, a German diplomat stationed in Africa, was frequently away from home and the Goring family went to live in the palatial estate of the children’s Jewish godfather, Baron Hermann von Epenstein, a prominent physician.

As Albert grew older he acquired some of his Jewish godfather’s characteristics…kindness, charitable, and caring for the wellbeing of others. He wanted to become a filmmaker until the rise of the Nazis in 1933.

In that year, he joined the anti-Nazi resistance movement because he hated the Nazis and abhorred their cruel treatment to Jews and fellow anti-Nazi party members.

It has been recorded that one day, while walking along a street, he saw a group of Jewish women on their knees who had been forced by the SS to scrub the streets. He immediately joined them.

When the SS officer recognized Albert as Hermann Goring’s brother, he felt ashamed and ordered the scrubbing to stop and let the Jewish women return home.

Once, when Albert learned that his former Jewish employer, Oskar Pilzer, had been arrested, he used his personal influence to have him freed and later he helped the Pilzer family to flee Germany to safety.

During the war years, he was Director of the Skoda Works in Czechoslovakia. He used to send trucks to concentration camps requesting prisoners for labor. When the trucks arrived at a desolate location they stopped and all the prisoners were allowed to escape. He often forged his brother’s signature on transit documents which allowed more prisoners to escape.

After the war, Albert found it difficult to find work in Germany because of his family’s name. He turned to writing and translating to earn a modest living and he lived in a small apartment, not far from the palatial estate of Baron von Epenstein, of his early childhood years.

Albert Goring died in 1966 almost an unknown hero. During his lifetime he saved dozens of Jews and dissidents from the death camps, hid them, and helped to provide for them from his German government pension. In his Will he left all of his funds to his housekeeper for her kindness to him.

In 2006 his story was told in a book, THIRTY-FOUR, written by the Australian writer William Hastings Burke. THE JEWISH CHRONICLE of London reviewed the book and recommended Albert Goring to be honored as a Righteous Gentile by Yad VaShem in Jerusalem.

In January 2016, the German television channel, Das Erste, broadcast a lengthy documentary about his life. It was called “Der Gute Goring”. The British BBC followed with a documentary “The Good Goring”.

Albert Goring remains one of the bravest resistance workers in Germany during the entire period of Nazi rule from 1933-1945.

As for his murderous brother, Hermann, he committed suicide while in prison awaiting death by hanging as ruled by the Justices at the Nuremburg trials.

Two brothers. One a saint, the other a sadist.