03 January 2011

Goering's Balls Not Small After All

The description "important" is massively overused in connection with books, but James Wyllie's Goering and Goering certainly deserves the epithet. The subtitle - Hitler's Henchman and His Anti-Nazi Brother - signals what the book is about; but what comes through only from a full reading is the immense bravery of Albert, who saved hundreds, possibly thousands, from persecution.

Reprisals and the crude settling of scores often serve to obscure the good done by those prepared to stand up to the brutality, the stupidity, the ineptitude, of corrupt and immoral regimes and organisations. As Pastor Martin Niemöller noted, it is often the soi-disant intellectuals that allow these things to happen:

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Albert Goering's efforts and achievements deserve wider recognition.

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