Albert Göring was born in 1900 to Heinrich Ernst Göring and his wife Franziska. His older brother Hermann Göring later gained notoriety as a Nazi war criminal.
The Göring family lived with their children’s aristocratic godfather, Ritter Hermann von Epenstein, in his Veldenstein and Mauterndorf castles. Von Epenstein was a prominent physician and acted as a surrogate father to the children as Heinrich Göring was often absent from the family home. According to the author Leonard Mosley, who had interviewed Göring family members, von Epenstein began a long-term term affair with Franziska Göring about a year before Albert Göring's birth. Mosley also states that the strong physical resemblance between von Epenstein and Albert Göring led many people to believe that they were father and son. If this belief was correct then Albert Göring had a Jewish paternal grandfather.
Albert Göring also seemed to have acquired his godfather's love of the bon vivant and looked set to lead an unremarkable life as a filmmaker, until the Nazis came to power in 1933. Unlike his older brother Hermann, who was a leading party member, Albert Göring despised Nazism and the brutality that it involved. On one occasion he is reported to have got down on his hands and knees and joined a group of Jews who were being forced to scrub the street. The SS officer in charge, unwilling to see Hermann Göring's brother also publicly humiliated, ordered the street scrubbing to stop. Albert Göring also used his influence to get his Jewish boss Oskar Pilzer freed after the Nazis arrested him. Göring then helped Pilzer and his family escape from Germany. He is reported to have done the same for many other Jews.
Albert Göring intensified his anti-Nazi activity when he was made export director at the Skoda works in Czechoslovakia. Here, he encouraged minor acts of sabotage and had contact with the Czech resistance. On many occasions Göring forged his brother's signature on transit documents. When he was caught he used his brother's influence to get himself released. Albert Göring would also send trucks to concentration camps with requests for labour. These trucks would then stop in an isolated area and their passengers would be allowed to escape.
After the war Albert Göring was questioned during the Nuremberg Tribunal. However many of the people who he'd helped testified on his behalf and he was released. Unfortunately Göring was then arrested by the Czechs but was once again freed when the full extent of his activities became known.
Albert Göring returned to Germany but found himself shunned because of his family name. He found occasional work as a writer and translator, living in a modest flat far from the baronial splendour of his childhood. He died in 1966 without having his wartime activities publicly acknowledged.
Unlike Oskar Schindler, a Nazi party member who made a large amount of money using Jewish slave labour, Albert Göring is not honoured on the Yad Vashem memorial.
References
Leonard Mosley, The Reich Marshal: A biography of Hermann Göring, Doubleday, 1974 (ISBN 0385049617)
The Göring Who Saved Jews, by Vida Goldgar, March 10, 2000, Jewish Times (Atlanta)
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