Herman görings bror

Porten was a star of the silent film era who could no longer work in Germany as she refused to leave her Jewish husband. But now, 50 years after his death, the enigma of Hermann Goering’s little brother is slowly being uncovered. Her father Albert confided in her mother that he was not Hermann Goering’s brother after all.

In the 1920s, amid the chaos and humiliation after the war, Hermann Goering met a failed artist and ambitious political activist, Adolf Hitler, and became one of the early members of the Nazi party. Karel Sobota later told how a high ranking SS officer one day arrived in Skoda and quickly entered directly in Albert Goering's room with Sobota unsuccessfully trying to block him.

Yet, unlike his brother, Albert was actively involved in opposing the Nazis.

"What he saw was against everything that he believed in, and he had no option," says William Hastings Burke, author of the book "Thirty Four: The Key to Göring's Last Secret." 

Brothers, but polar opposites

How could two brothers turn out to be so different?

He later recalled hearing Goering say: 'I defy Hitler, my brother and all the National Socialists.' He began giving Kovacs money and set up a joint bank account at the Bank Orelli in Bern which he instructed Kovacs to use to help Jewish refugees to get to Lisbon. In Vienna, he discovered Nazi officers forcing elderly Jewish women to scrub the streets on their knees.

Through the mists of cigarette smoke that encircled your being, I saw you, haggard and tired, yet with a determination to fullfill some dreadful task.

Little did I know that you, at the risk of your own life, gave orders in the name of your half brother, a high ranking German official, to release prisoners, to issue exit papers to thousands of Jewish and other ethnic peoples, thus saving their lives.

He sought action and became a much decorated fighter pilot, commanding the squadron of the famous Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen. The interrogator, Victor Parker, had heard from his aunt Sophie that Hermann Goering’s brother Albert had indeed helped Jewish people to escape the concentration camps. "Albert would go to his brother Hermann and say, 'Hermann you're so big and so powerful, and here's a Jew who's a good Jew and doesn't belong in a concentration camp'," Sonnenfeldt said. 

" 'Can't you just sign a paper?' And Hermann would say, 'This is absolutely the last time I'm going to do this, don't come back'," said Sonnenfeldt, 80, on a tour of Germany to promote a book about his Nuremberg experiences Mehr als ein Leben.

Irate SS officers asked to see his papers, and once they saw the Goering name, they left him alone.

Another incident occurred in Vienna soon afterward. Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Social Democrats, Communists, partisans, trade unionists, and Polish intelligentsia were also victims of the hate and aggression carried out by the Nazis.