Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. The Testimony of Mosche (Moses) Feigenberg: Testimony 2. 2011. Available online: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/feigenberg.html (accessed on 17 November 2022). Dan talks to Lord Daniel Finkelstein about his family's experience of the Holocaust, their time in Belsen, and their friendship with Anne Frank. Listen Now Efforts in vain? The second time was the “Kinder Aktion” – Children’s Massacre of March 27 th, 1944. No words in any language can describe this dreadful atrocity. We all knew that Major Plagge would intercede with the SS and do anything he could to help us and to alleviate our suffering. Of the many situations that arose, the following event stands out in our minds: On a daily basis, the testimony shows, Plagge worked to keep the camp at high peak productivity while insulating his laborers from the surrounding massacres and genocide. He retained relative independence so long as the repair work got done until shortly before the end of the war, when the SS and Gestapo outmaneuvered him.

In the summer of 1944 the Soviet Red Army advanced to the outskirts of Vilnius. This change in the tides of war brought both joy and fear to the surviving Jews of the HKP camp who understood that the SS would try to kill them in the days before the German retreat. [ citation needed] Many prepared for this eventuality by discreetly making hiding places in the camp in secret bunkers, in walls, and in the rafters of the attic. A large and crucial unknown was one of timing — the prisoners needed to know when the SS killing squads were coming so they could successfully implement plans to escape or hide. As the sounds of fighting grew closer the level of tension within the camp became palpable. [ citation needed] After Dr. Good learned that Major Plagge had no children he could thank, he resolved to push for his recognition by Yad Vashem. He said it took awhile for Yad Vashem to accept that Major Plagge put himself in harm's way, since the German military endorsed using Jewish slave labor to support the war effort. 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.

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Oberscharführer Richter, the SS representative in the camp. He told them that the Wehrmacht was leaving Vilnius and that from now on they were the responsibility of the SS " and you all know how well the SS cares for its Jewish prisoners," he is believed to have said at the time. The prisoners took the hint and for many of them, this was the signal to go into hiding or to escape. Barrera, F.B.; Pardo, J.F.J. Geoarchaeology as Geoarchaeology. J. Anthropol. Archaeol. Sci. 2020, 2, 319–321. [ Google Scholar] How much of this was true? Was it possible that Pearl’s memories were part fantasy—a young girl’s desperate need to believe in human kindness in a world gone mad? Listening to their mother’s nebulous recollections about Major Plagge, the family could not be sure. 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. Two years after the end of the war, Plagge stood trial before a deNazification court. Subordinates of his testified about his efforts to save Jews but most convincing was the unexpected testimony of Maria Eichamüller on behalf of some Jewish survivors from the HKP camp. She testified: " Plagge had always cared for them and he had always helped them through hard times."

For more than fifty years Jewish survivors from Vilna had been searching for Major Plagge, to thank him and to try to understand how he came to stand as a light of moral courage in the midst of unfathomable evil. For many years the identity and motivations of this unusual officer remained obscured by the mists of time. Test Archive.RU. Life Story of Perella Esterowicz—Pearl Good. 2022. Available online: https://textarchive.ru/c-1882789-pall.html (accessed on 19 November 2022). User Guide for MicaSense Sensors. 2022. Available online: https://support.micasense.com/hc/en-us/articles/360039671254-User-Guide-for-MicaSense-Sensors (accessed on 23 December 2022). Author and writer Derek Niemann discovered only a few years ago that the grandfather he never knew had been an SS officer, in charge of slave labourers in the Nazi concentration camps. Dr Noemie Lopian is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Today Derek and Noemie work together and have started sharing their stories as a warning of the perils of extremism and to inspire greater understanding. Watch Now Keeping families together Survivors Mark and Anna Balber in a letter to the court during Plagge’s denazification trial, made the following statement: “During the Nazi occupation of Vilna, we, along with about 1200 other Jews, were prisoners in a forced labor camp known as HKP. We were under the control of both the Wehrmacht and the SS. Major Plagge was in charge of the Wehrmacht detachment.Karl Plagge was tried before an Allied de-nazification court in 1947, which accepted his plea to be classified as a 'fellow traveler' of the Nazi Party, whose rescue activities were undertaken for humanitarian reasons, rather than overt opposition to Nazism. Survivors he rescued testified on his behalf. Dr. Good said he had concluded that Major Plagge spent the rest of his life guilt-ridden for not having done more than he did. And you know full well how well the S.S. takes care of their Jewish prisoners…” he added meaningfully.