The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews, Expanded Edition

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But he could not prevent the SS from seizing 250 children from the camp and murdering them while he was on leave. On his return he made no secret of his disgust with what he called the latest "achievements of my fellow Germans". Plagge was a World War One veteran and engineer who joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (later to become known as the Nazi Party) in 1931, in the hopes of rebuilding Germany following the economic collapse. Malkes, S. The Righteous of the Wehrmacht; Academic Studies Press: Boston, MA, USA, 2014. [ Google Scholar] Eventually, the SS demanded that the women and children be removed as they were idle in the camps. Plagge’s response was to import sewing machines and set up sewing workshops and put the women and children to work too. Plagge Denazification Trial Transcript. p. 31 . http://searchformajorplagge.com/searchformajorplagge.com/Plagge_Documents.html.

Parrot Sequoia User Manual. 2022. Available online: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1321911/Parrot-Sequoia.html (accessed on 23 December 2022).The HKP consisted of a main shop on the outskirts of Vilnius and supervised 16 smaller work shops in the vicinity. In addition to members of the Wehrmacht, local citizens, including Jews were employed here as well. Plagge, meanwhile having risen to Major, saw to it that his men conducted themselves humanely and well mannered towards the civilian employees. Violence against the unarmed civilian population, Jews, Poles, whatever, was not tolerated by him. He barred fanatical Nazis from his team. " Mr. Plagge himself treated Jews in a very civil and humane way and he expected his subordinates to act accordingly," Alfred Stumpff, one of Plagge's lieutenants, says.

On July 1, 1944, Major Plagge entered the camp and made an informal speech to the Jewish prisoners who gathered around him. In the presence of an SS officer he told the Jews present at his speech that he and his men were being relocated to the west, and that in spite of his requests, he did not have permission to take his skilled Jewish workers with his unit. However, he said that they should not worry, for they too would be relocated on Monday July 3, and that during this relocation they would be escorted by the SS, which as they knew was “an organization devoted to the protection of refugees”. [8]After graduating from Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium, [2] a secondary school that focused on the classics, Plagge was drafted into the Imperial German Army. He fought as a lieutenant in World War I on the Western Front, participating in the battles of the Somme, Verdun, and Flanders. Imprisoned in a British prisoner-of-war camp from 1917 to 1920, he caught polio and became disabled in his left leg. Plagge graduated from the Technical University of Darmstadt in 1924 with a degree in engineering. On being drafted into the Heer at the beginning of World War II, he was put in command of an engineering unit, HKP562, whose duties involved repairing military vehicles damaged on the eastern front. Plagge and his unit arrived in Vilnius (Vilna) in July 1941 and soon witnessed the genocide being carried out against the Jews of the area. Plagge would later testify that "I saw unbelievable things that I could not support...it was then that I began to work against the Nazis". [3]

The trial investigated this political history as well as the series of events that brought Plagge to Vilna as commandant of a slave labor camp. It elicited Plagge’s admission of shame and guilt at having contributed to the rise of the Nazi regime. In February 2006 the former Frankensteinkaserne, a Bundeswehr base in Pfungstadt, Germany, was renamed the Karl-Plagge-Kaserne. Adobe, Adobe Illustrator. 2022. Available online: https://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator.html (accessed on 23 December 2022). Later, towards the close of World War Two, the SS began storming labour camps and executing the inmates. While hundreds were ultimately executed at HKP 562, Plagge managed to warn some of the Jewish workers of the looming threat, encouraging dozens to hide and escape death. In autumn 1943, Plagge learned of the Nazis’ plan to liquidate the Vilna ghettos, which meant certain death for all those Jews still alive.

And you know full well how well the S.S. takes care of their Jewish prisoners…” he added meaningfully.

Although unable to stop the SS from liquidating the remaining prisoners in July 1944, Plagge managed to warn the prisoners in advance, allowing about 200 to hide from the SS and survive until the Red Army's capture of Vilnius. Of a pre-war Jewish population in Vilnius, only 2,000 survived, of which the largest single group, were saved by Plagge. And you know full well how well the S.S. takes care of their Jewish prisoners…” Plagge added carefully. Originally a Lutheran, Plagge lost his belief in God because of the atrocities that he witnessed during the Holocaust. [39] [40] Assessment and legacy [ edit ] HKP survivor Pearl Good points to Plagge's name on the Wall of the Righteous at Yad Vashem Plagge brought “his Jews” there a week before the Gestapo began annihilating the ghetto inhabitants. Witnesses testified that Plagge freed Jews from prison and pulled entire families from the Vilna ghetto to the relative safety of his labor camp.

Jewish employees

During the Second World War, he used his position as a staff officer in the German Army to employ and protect Jews in the Vilna Ghetto. At first, Plagge employed Jews who lived inside the ghetto, but when it was due to be liquidated in September 1943, he set up the HKP 562, forced labour camp, where he saved many male Jews, by issuing them official work permits, on the false premise, that their holders skills were vital for the German war effort, and also their wives and children, by claiming they would work better, if their families were alive.