“I had myself sterilized so I would not pass on the blood of a monster”

This morning I came across a news article in a British newspaper about the children of the Nazi war criminals, which had this sentence in the headline:  “I had myself sterilized so I would not pass on the blood of a monster.”

“German monster” Hermann Goering

The person who said this was Bettina Goering, great niece of Adolf Hitler’s second in command, Hermann Goering; she spoke these words on camera in a documentary, entitled Hitler’s Children, made by Israeli director Chanoch Zeevi.

The “monsters” in the photo above are, from left to right, in the front row: Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. The photo was taken at the trial of the German war criminals, known as the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal.

Hitler with his god-daughter Edda Goering, daughter of Herman Goering

Of course, Hitler had no children, even though his love of children, and dogs, has been well documented. Maybe he didn’t want to pass on the monster genes that he knew he had.  Hitler’s only known relatives, who are now living in America, have never married, and they say it is because they don’t want the Hitler name to continue.

Hitler loved children and dogs

Hermann Goering was the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force), President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia, and Hitler’s designated successor. Goering set up the German secret state police, which was called the Gestapo, and he also authorized a conference to plan “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”

After reading more of the news article, I learned that Bettina Goering, who now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is not really a blood relative of a Nazi monster. Bettina said that her father, Heinz Goering, was adopted by his infamous uncle, Hermann Goering, after his own father died.  Still, one can’t be too careful.  Both Bettina and her brother had themselves sterilized so that they could never breed any little monsters.

Also featured in the documentary is Niklas Frank, the son of Hans Frank, whom the news article describes as “the  Nazi governor of occupied Poland responsible for the death camps in which six million Jewish people were killed.” (Four of the Nazi death camps were in occupied Poland: Majdanek, Belzec, Treblinka,  and Sobibor.  The other two, Auschwitz and Chelmno, were in the Greater German Reich.)

Niklas says in the documentary that he “despises” his father’s past and describes his father as “a slime-hole of a Hitler fanatic.”

Monika Hertwig, daughter of Amon Goeth

The most pathetic of the children of the Nazi monsters, in my mind, is Monika Hertwig, the daughter of Amon Goeth. In the documentary, Monika describes her meeting with a man who tells her how her father shot women and babies “for sport.”

Monika was featured in another documentary, in which the house where her father allegedly shot prisoners from the balcony is shown.

Tourists at the house where Amon Goeth allegedly shot prisoners from the balcony

In 1998, I visited the house where Amon Goeth lived, which is shown in the photo above, and my tour guide told me that Amon Goeth actually shot prisoners from the top of a hill that is in between the house and the camp.  As anyone can plainly see, the camp is not visible from the balcony of Amon Goeth’s  house because of that hill.

There is a famous scene in Steven Spielberg’s movie,  Schindler’s List, in which the Commandant of Plaszow is shooting prisoners at random from his balcony. In the novel Schindler’s Ark, on which the movie is based, the author explains that Amon Goeth was allowed to shoot prisoners from his balcony because Plaszow was not at that time a concentration camp under the control of the Economic office in Oranienburg.  However, Goeth and Monika’s mother did not live in the house with the balcony while Plaszow was a labor camp, so this scene is total fiction.

Scene from the movie “Schindler’s List”

Later, in the movie, Amon Goeth is no longer there, but there is no explanation for why he is gone.  In real life, Goeth was arrested by Dr. Georg Konrad Morgen, the SS judge who investigated all the concentration camps for corruption and crimes against the prisoners. When the war ended, Goeth was awaiting trial in Morgen’s court, on a charge of stealing from the camp warehouses. Goeth was put on trial in a Polish court, but he was not charged with personally shooting anyone, nor with beating his maid.

Daughter of Amon Goeth is made into a monster with bad lighting

In 1968, after a visit to Germany, Elie Wiesel wrote these famous words in Legends of Our Time:

“Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate — healthy, virile hate — for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German.”

Should all Germans have themselves sterilized because of  “what the German personifies” and for “what persists in the German?”

Should the Germans be forbidden to adopt children because the genes of German monsters can be passed on, even to children that are not blood relatives?

You can read the whole story here.