Plagge’s efforts are corroborated by survivor testimony, historical documents found in Germany, and Plagge’s own testimony found in a letter he wrote in 1957, a year before his death.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 [ ] The front line is moving west and HKP's assignment is to always be a certain number of miles behind the front line...As a result, you the Jews, and the workers will also be moved...since all of you are highly specialized and experienced workers in an area of great importance to the German army, you will be reassigned to an HKP unit...You will be escorted during this evacuation by the SS which, as you know, is an organization devoted to the protection of refugees. Thus, there is nothing to worry about... " Only I alone know about all the struggles, all the conflicts which went into putting up this camp, that daily tests all my fortitude. It is an island of absolute contrast to what our leaders strive for: to utterly crush the people in the East. [i.e. Jews]. That is why they send the dregs of humanity to this place.

Karl Plagge | Military Wiki | Fandom Karl Plagge | Military Wiki | Fandom

But the trial also drew on the testimonies of numerous witnesses and sworn statements from survivors in DP camps in Germany. All concurred that Plagge had used his influential position to covertly work against the Nazi regime. Only about 60 per cent of the Jews worked at the vehicle repair depot or a shop for repairing Wehrmacht uniforms. Plagge established various industries for the rest of his workers, including a rabbit farm, a nursery, and a carpenter’s shop, declaring all of his workers essential to the war effort. He strongly resisted the SS’ efforts to remove these “nonessential” workers. Until the early 2000s, Pearl possessed no clear-cut information about Plagge—not even his first name. Yet she was certain that she, her parents and scores of other Jews owed him their lives. In her memories, the German commandant embodied a heroic, larger-than-life image—a stern but humane Nazi officer who schemed to keep Jews from being killed. Michael Good, a family physician in the U.S. state of Connecticut, says Major Plagge saved his mother and seven other members of his family from sure death, along with hundreds of other inhabitants of the Jewish ghetto in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Keeping families together

Our relatively stable existence was shattered twice by Gestapo atrocities that made us realize the relative safety we felt in the HKP was an illusion; it could collapse at any moment. Plagge was tried before an Allied denazification court in 1947, which accepted his plea to be classified as a " fellowtraveler" of the NaziParty, whose rescue activities were undertaken for humanitarian reasons rather than overt oppositiontoNazism. Survivors he rescued testified on his behalf. Plagge died ten years after the trial. He found hidden bunkers, he found the location of his mother's bunker, based on her memoirs and sketches. He even found makeshift children's toys, left behind in haste. 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 Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the Holocaust, to have Plagge recognized as " Righteous Among the Nations". [42]

Karl Plagge - Holocaust Historical Society

Plagge passed away on June 19, 1957, in Darmstadt. In 2005, following two unsuccessful petitions, the Holocaust Institution of Yad Vashem, recognized Karl Plagge, as a 'Righteous Among the Nations.' 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]William Begell, a survivor who was then just 17 years old, was interviewed by Good for a book he wrote called "The Search for Major Plagge." He said he understood the warning, and jumped out a window to escape evacuation by the Nazis. Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial Image: AP After having hired endangered Jews in the Vilna Ghetto to work in his unit's workshops from 1941 to 1943, thereby protecting the workers and their families from the murderous activities of the SS, the HKP camp was hastily erected in September 1943 when Plagge learned of the impending liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto, where all inhabitants were to be killed regardless of their work papers.

Karl Plagge - death camps Karl Plagge - death camps

Major Plagge was determined to protect his remaining Jewish workers and their families before the entire ghetto was liquidated. In a stroke of inspiration, he came up with the plan to establish a separate work-camp in which highly skilled Jewish workers who could repair vehicles needed on the Eastern front were indispensable. In September 1943 it became clear to Plagge that the Vilna Ghetto was soon to be liquidated. All the remaining Jews in the ghetto were to be taken by the SS, regardless of any working papers they had. In this crucial period Plagge made extraordinary bureaucratic efforts to form a free-standing HKP562 Slave Labor Camp on Subocz Street on the outskirts of Vilnius. Evidence shows that he not only tried to protect his productive male workers, but also made vigorous efforts to protect the women and children in his camp, actively overcoming considerable resistance from local SS officers. [4] [5] On September 16, 1943, Plagge transported over 1,000 of his Jewish workers and their families from the Vilna Ghetto to the newly built HKP camp on Subocz Street, where they remained in relative safety. [6] Less than a week later, on September 23, 1943, the SS liquidated the Vilna Ghetto. The rest of Vilna's Jews were either executed immediately at the nearby execution grounds in the Paneriai (Ponary) Forest, or sent to death camps in Nazi occupied Europe. [7] 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."

Plagge and work certificates

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. On 16 September 1943, Plagge transported over 1,000 of his Jewish workers and their families from the Vilna Ghetto to the newly built HKP camp at 37 Subocz Street, where they remained in relative safety. [19] Plagge saved not only skilled male workers but also their wives and children, arguing that the workers would not be motivated without their families. [20] Less than a week later, on 23 September, the SS liquidated the Vilna Ghetto. The rest of Vilna's Jews were either executed immediately at Ponary or sent to concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Europe. [16] A few Jews hid in the ruins of the ghetto; arguing that he needed more workers, Plagge brought 100 arrested Jews into HKP. Another 100 Jews were smuggled in by the resistance movement with Plagge's acquiescence, and the population peaked at 1,250 early in 1944. The camp, which consisted of two multistory tenements originally constructed to house Jews on welfare, was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by Lithuanian collaborators and SS men. About 60% of the Jews worked at the vehicle repair depot or a shop for repairing Wehrmacht uniforms. Plagge established various industries for the rest of his workers, including a rabbit farm, a nursery, and a carpenter's shop, declaring all of his workers essential to the war effort. He strongly resisted the SS's efforts to remove these nonessential workers. [9] [20] A maline (Yiddish slang for 'hiding place' [21]) where Jews hid during the liquidation of the camp Plagge was born to a Prussian family in Darmstadt, Germany, on 10 July 1897; many of his ancestors had been militarydoctors. Plagge's father died in 1904, leaving Plagge, his mother, and his older sister. [1] 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 HKP (Heeres Kraftfahr Park) was a Wehrmacht military unit that was responsible for the repair of Wehrmacht vehicles. The main HKP 562, works, with its large vehicle repair workshops and its spare part department, as well as the HKP headquarters were located in the eastern outskirts of Vilnius. The HKP 562 also supervised 16 other vehicle workshops which were located in Vilnius and its surrounding area.

Karl Plagge - Yad Vashem. The World Holocaust Remembrance Center

On the other hand, the historian reasoned, Plagge was a virtual prisoner of the system who took what he saw as the only course “that allowed him to save more Jews than any other rescuer in Vilna.”My name is Pearl (Perela) Esterowicz. My parents, Ida Gerstein Esterowicz and Samuel Esterowicz, and I survived three years of German Occupation in Vilnius that annihilated the city’s Jews. 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. In 2005 the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial posthumously bestowed the title “ Righteous Among the Nations” on Plagge. [13]