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

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Plagge’s efforts are corroborated by survivor testimony, historical documents found in Germany, and Plagge’s own testimony found in a letter he wrote in 1957, a year before his death. In this letter he compares himself with the character of Dr. Rieux in Albert Camus' novel The Plague and describes his hopeless struggle against a plague of death that slowly envelops the inhabitants of his city. [11] Post-war [ ] People look at Europe today, at Germany, at the other countries that joyfully participated in our murder, and they say, Look, things are different today. They are ignoring the past, and the present, and the future. There were many good Germans in those days, and they took heroic actions that amaze their grandchildren of today. When asked, would you have the courage to do what your grossfater did, your grandfather, the answer is ... I don't think so. We must remember these men and we must learn. In 1999, HKP 562 survivor Pearl Good traveled to Vilnius with her family. Good's son, Michael, decided to investigate the story of Plagge, but he had trouble locating him because survivors knew him only as "Major Plagge" and did not know his full name or place of birth. After fourteen months, Good was able to find Plagge's Wehrmacht personnel file. He eventually published the results of his research in 2005 as The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews. [41] Good formed an organization of researchers and friends that he called the "Plagge Group" and, along with HKP survivors, petitioned YadVashem, Israel's official memorial to the Holocaust, to have Plagge recognized as " RighteousAmongtheNations". [42]

The Good Nazi (TV Movie 2018) - IMDb The Good Nazi (TV Movie 2018) - IMDb

Plagge Denazification Trial Transcript. pp. 11–13 . http://searchformajorplagge.com/searchformajorplagge.com/Plagge_Documents.html. After the outbreak of World War Two in 1939, he was drafted to form part of the engineering facility which brought him to Vilnius, Lithuania. As an officer in the German army, Plagge was put in charge of an engineering unit known as Heereskraftfahrpark (HKP) 562 in 1941. Based in Vilnius, Lithuania, the unit was essentially a forced labour camp. Plagge was appalled by the persecution of Jews in the region, and set about issuing work permits to unskilled Jewish workers so as to deem them ‘essential’ in the eyes of the German state. We look at Karl Plagge and we know that in every generation, in every land, there are good people and there are bad people. All that changes is the political and economic climate. Bad times, when people cannot work, cannot earn a living, the climate is ripe and right for the haters to rise again. Good times when a man can go sailing on a Sunday and mow his lawn in his fancy car-like lawnmower ...these are good times for peace, love and understanding. We need to be prepared for both.

Efforts in vain?

During the summer of 1944, the Red Army advanced to the outskirts of Vilnius and the Wehrmacht withdrew abruptly in early July. [20] The camp was to be dissolved; accused of being soft on Jews, Plagge was forbidden to take them with his unit. [27] Knowing that the camp would be liquidated before the Red Army arrived, the Jews made hiding places in the camp in secret bunkers, in walls, and in the rafters of the attic. [28] However, they needed to know when the camp would be liquidated so they could implement their plans to escape or hide. On 1 July, Plagge made an informal speech to the Jewish prisoners in the presence of SS Oberscharführer Richter: Establishment [ edit ] St. Peter and St. Paul's Church in Vilnius with a sign pointing to the HKP 562 forced labor camp Plagge died in 1957 in his hometown of Darmstadt, at age 59. After the war, he was said to be burdened by guilt at not having saved more people from the Nazis. Unfortunately, most of us could not escape the camp. We could either hide in previously prepared malinas (hiding places) , as my parents and I did, or just await our fate. In spite of all of Plagge’s efforts, only 150-200 of us survived.

Yad Vashem to Honor German WWII Officer – DW – 04/11/2005 Yad Vashem to Honor German WWII Officer – DW – 04/11/2005

Major Karl Plagge was a hero, but he never saw himself as such, he was just trying to do what any decent man would do. But this was a time when decent men were hard to find. He was ashamed of his people, the Germans, and he decided to work against them. He was just one man but he did what he could. He not only saved Jews, he treated them with respect. He provided extra food, medical care, and wood for fire during the harsh winters. He also allowed the workers to build Malinas secret bunkers. My father had worked in the HKP even before we were moved into the ghetto, and his facharbeiter schein, work certificates, had saved him from the SS murderers. After we were moved to the ghetto on September 6, 1941, Plagge’s gele schein – “skilled worker” certificates saved us and kept us alive until September 1943. Then the four-day aktion that butchered so many Jews put an end to life certificates.He came into conflict with the leadership of the party after 1933 when Hitlerseizedpower. According to his later testimony, Plagge refused to accept Naziracialtheories, which he considered unscientific, and was disgusted by the persecutionofpoliticalopponents and the corruption of many Nazi functionaries. Instead of leaving the party, he attempted to effect change from within, accepting a position as a scientific lecturer and leader of a Nazi educational institute in Darmstadt. [5] Because he refused to teach Nazi racial ideology, he was dismissed from his position in 1935. A local party official accused Plagge of being on good terms with Jews and Freemasons, treating Jews in his home laboratory, and opposing the NaziboycottofJewishbusinesses, threatening to bring Plagge before a party tribunal. Instead, Plagge ceased his activity with the party, disenchanted with Nazism. [6]

Honour for German major who saved 250 Jews - The Guardian

As the Russians approached Vilnius in July 1944, the SS prepared to kill the Jewish workers. With an SS officer at his side, he told the inmates that they "will be escorted during this evacuation by the SS, which, as you know, is an organisation devoted to the protection of refugees. Thus there is nothing to worry about." Because he had joined the Nazi Party so early and commanded a labor camp where many prisoners were murdered, he was tried in 1947 as part of the postwar denazification process; he hired a lawyer to defend him. [34] Plagge and his former subordinates told the court about his efforts to help Jewish forced laborers; Plagge's lawyer asked for him to be classified as a fellowtraveler rather than an active Nazi. Former prisoners of HKP 562 in a displacedpersoncamp in Ludwigsburg told Maria Eichamueller [ who?] about Plagge's actions. After reading about the trial in a local newspaper, Eichamueller testified on Plagge's behalf, which influenced the trial result in his favor. The court did not exonerate Plagge completely, because it believed that his actions had been motivated by humanitarianism rather than opposition to Nazism. [35] [36] There Plagge entered a strange moral gray zone. He was now a Nazi Major, actively serving both the military and the holocaust. Yet it was only by serving that he managed to save so many. In fact he's remembered along with Schindler. Plagge probably saved as many lives. Like Schindler, he'd been labeling countless Jews, and their families, as "essential workers." Our survival was thanks to the efforts of Major Karl Plagge, Chief of the Army Vehicle Repair Shops (HKP) of the Vilnius area.He also insisted that the men be allowed to bring their wives and children, saying it would be good for morale and pro duction. In time, they too were certified as essential workers. In response, Plagge set into action automotive workshops for the male Jewish inmates to work in and argued to his superiors that they would be more enthusiastic workers if they could stay with their families. His vision of the HKP was more than just a repair shop, for most people it was their permit for life. When the city was liberated by Soviet forces a few days later, some 200 Jews shakily emerged. They represented the largest single group of Jewish survivors in Vilna. After leaving Vilnius, Plagge led his unit westward and surrendered to the UnitedStatesArmy on 2 May 1945 without suffering a single casualty. [33] The success of Plagge’s efforts to save Jews is manifested through a survival rate of about 20–25% among those he hired compared with the much lower rate of 3–5% — virtual annihilation — among the rest of Lithuania's Jews. The 250 to 300 surviving Jews of the HKP camp constituted the largest single group of survivors of the genocide in Vilnius.

Karl Plagge - Yad Vashem. The World Holocaust Remembrance Center

Karl Plagge ( pronounced [kaʁl ˈplaɡə] ⓘ; 10 July 1897– 19 June 1957) was a German Army officer who rescued Jews during the Holocaust in Lithuania by issuing work permits to non-essential workers. A partially disabled veteran of World War I, Plagge studied engineering and joined the Nazi Party in 1931 in hopes of helping Germany rebuild from the economic collapse following the war. After being dismissed from the position of lecturer for being unwilling to teach racism and his opposition to Nazi racial policies, he stopped participating in party activities in 1935 and left the party when the war broke out.

During WorldWarII, he used his position as a staff officer in the GermanArmy to employ and protect Jews in the VilnaGhetto. At first, Plagge employed Jews who lived inside the ghetto, but when the ghetto was slated for liquidation in September 1943, he set up the HKP562forcedlaborcamp, 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 made efforts to save the worker's wives and children by claiming they would work better if their families were alive. Through these efforts he was able to protect over 1250 Jews from the genocide occurring in Vilna until the final days of the German occupation. Although unable to stop the SS from liquidating the remaining prisoners in July 1944, Plagge managed to warn the prisoners of the imminent arrival of SS killing squads, allowing about 200 to successfully hide from the SS and survive until the RedArmy's captureofVilnius. Of 100,000 pre-war Jews in Vilnius, only 2,000 survived, of which the largest single group were saved by Plagge. Though the camp’s official role was fixing military vehicles, Major Plagge found jobs for all. Dr. Good in a speech about the book “In Search of Major Plagge,” said his grandfather, Samuel Esterowicz, “couldn’t change a light bulb,” but was deemed “essential” by Major Plagge. 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. women," said Mr Fraenkel. "He really got into a heated argument with the SS that without the children and the women the motivation of the workers would be very low, and so this would be injurious for production.