Bettina Goering talks about being a great niece of Adolf Hitler's second in command Hermann Göring, the highest-ranking Nazi leader tried at the Nuremberg Trials. Ms. Göring is a doctor of Oriental medicine specializing in herbs and acupuncture.
Speaking about her family, Bettina Goering said her father Heinz was adopted by his infamous uncle, the Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering) after his own father died and became a fighter pilot for the Luftwaffe. Heinz was shot down over the Soviet Union and returned from captivity, several years later, in 1952 only to find that his two brothers had killed themselves because of their shame. The family's fortunes were also gone. Heinz never spoke about the Holocaust, or about his notorious uncle, Bettina say, 'But my grandmother was less evasive - she adored him. (Hermann Goering, that is) As head of the Red Cross in Nazi Germany she hobnobbed with the regime's other top leaders and had many pictures of herself alongside Hitler.”
The Nazi Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goering, was sentenced to death along with 11 others at the Nuremberg trials in 1946, but he avoided the execution by committing a suicide by swallowing a poison pill (cyanide) in his cell the night before his execution.
Ms. Goering, a doctor of Oriental medicine was asked, does she see any goodness in Hermann Goering?
"That's hard to say. Is somebody ever totally bad or good? I hope not. I think certain circumstances happen that might turn somebody into a psychopath. When I see Hermann as a family person, I think he's really nice, and charming, and incredibly caretaking, and it's hard for me to see flaws. But then you see what he does in politics and how he killed people, including his so-called friends."
When she was asked does she has any desire for power, Bettina replied:
"No, not even. But, it's happened. I'm somebody who naturally takes charge, who can easily be in charge of people, but it scares me at the same time that I could abuse the power as he did. It's a collective consciousness thing. It might be in my DNA. I think they're starting to prove that all the experiences of your ancestors manifest themselves in the DNA."
'The hardest part is admitting that I could have liked him. I was so shocked by that,' she said, “The image I have of him is an overweight man, who liked art, stamping around in rather flamboyant uniforms. “That’s the image I had too, until I started digging further and it’s much more complex. The truth is that he was involved in the Holocaust too. I didn’t know that until I started the process of writing this book. He was as involved as any of them. He might have not been as gung-ho in his rhetoric about Jews. He came across as ‘the Luftwaffe guy’. But he was just as involved. I first learned that when I did a documentary called Bloodlines. He was part of the Final Solution. He co-authored it. So he was very involved. He was part of setting up concentration camps. And, when they decided to do the Final Solution, he was part of all that.”
'Now I am accepting myself more for who I am, whatever that encompasses - the good, the bad and the ugly.”