Bettina Göring
Grandchild of Göring’s Older Brother
“Yes, I look just like Hermann Göring. More than Hermann's own daughter does. My brother resembles our mother's relatives. But I have much in common with my father's side beyond my face. Past experiences have made me very conscious of that. I don't know whether I have the same faults as those people. But I wish I had taken after my mother's side instead. It is unpleasant, isn't it, if you have inherited the very things people hate.”
Bettina's grandfather's younger brother, Hermann Göring, was a Nazi leader and a close associate of Hitler. He ordered the extermination of Europe's Jews and was sentenced to death at Nuremberg, but committed suicide by poison just before his execution.
“The name Göring was a burden to me for a long time. When I moved to America, married and took my husband's surname, it felt like a fresh start. But later we divorced, and I agonized over whether to keep his name or return to Göring. If Göring had not been my maiden name, I would have stopped using my husband's name without hesitation. But it was better than Göring.”
[Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA]
"I left Germany more than thirty years ago. Perhaps it has been thirty-five now. Being far away makes it easier to face my family's past."
“My brother and I made a practical but weighty decision. We decided to be sterilized. We believed we must not add to the descendants of the Göring family.”
“When my grandmother lived with us—I was about eleven or twelve—we watched a documentary about the Holocaust as a family. Throughout it, my grandmother kept saying, ‘It's all lies, all lies.’ ‘How can you say that? Look at the truth,’ we told her. Even then, there were differences of opinion and arguments within the family.Those people are terrified of admitting what happened. So I think they tried to look away by insisting that none of it had happened.”
[Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA]
“Sometimes I miss German food, culture and music. At such times I hold a German-food party. My husband sometimes sings German folk songs.Nazism has colored all of German culture, but think about it: Nazi rule lasted only twelve years. I love German classical music and literature. They have a quality found nowhere else.”
“Thank you for coming. Let us enjoy German traditions without inhibition for a change. We have prepared goulash and red cabbage. There is also Spätzle. Now, enjoy yourselves.”
♪ No place is as beautiful as the homeland
Vast mountains and rivers stretching endlessly
We meet beneath the linden trees
As dusk draws near, we meet beneath the linden trees, as dusk draws near ♪