Wartime Activities
The world was plunged into war in 1939, and Albert continued to risk his life helping others. Once the war began, he landed a job as an export director at Skoda Works (a huge arms manufacturer) in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. In this instance, Albert didn’t need the family name to get the role, as he had developed a reputation in his own right.
The Gestapo suspected the younger Goering of assisting Jews and placed him under surveillance. There is little doubt that if Hermann weren’t his brother, Albert would have been executed during the war. Although Albert was fundamentally different from Hermann in almost every way, he knew he could rely on his older sibling for protection. However, at family gatherings, neither man brought up politics, and they never spoke about what they were doing.
Throughout the course of the war, Albert was insubordinate and rude to Nazi officers. The Gestapo arrested him several times, but he was always released after a phone call to Berlin. One of his most daring acts during World War II involved driving a convoy of trucks to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. He told a Nazi official that he was Albert Goering, head of Skoda Works and that he needed workers. He filled the truck with Jewish prisoners, went to the woods and released everyone.
This was among the last good deeds he performed as the Germans finally grew tired of his meddling. A note from a Nazi Governor in Prague in 1944 requested permission to take Albert to the Reich Security Head Office in Berlin for interrogation. Berlin issued an order to shoot him, so the younger Goering fled to a safe house.
Obscurity & Death
The Allies defeated the Nazis in 1945 and captured Hermann on May 7. Albert presented himself to the American Intelligence Service in Salzburg two days later and met his brother in the U.S. interrogation center in Berlin. It was the last time the Goering brothers spoke to one another.
Albert told the investigators about his role in the war, but no one believed him due to his last name which was synonymous with evil. He produced a list of 34 people he saved and added other details such as professions, residence, and citizenship. It wasn’t enough to gain his freedom, so he spent another 15 months in prison before an interrogator named Victor Parker finally believed Albert due to a stroke of good fortune as Parker recognized one of the names of the rescued people.
Unfortunately for Albert, the Americans sent him to a prison in Prague to ensure there was no evidence against him in Czechoslovakia. He was put on trial, but luckily, resistance fighters and members of the Skoda factory arrived to praise the defendant. Albert was acquitted in March 1947, but sadly, the rest of his life was a sorry affair.
After returning to Salzburg, Albert found the Goering name to be a curse as he was unable to find work. His remaining years were spent as an alcoholic social pariah, forced to survive on food parcels from grateful Jews he had saved. He died from pancreatic cancer in 1966. Today there is a debate as to whether Albert should be posthumously awarded the State of Israel’s highest honorary award where recipients are known as ‘Righteous Among the Nations.’