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

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Plagge went to the train station to argue with an SS non-commissionedofficer, BrunoKittel, who was in charge of the liquidation. The ceremony, held in Jerusalem on 11 April 2005, was attended by many survivors, Konrad Hesse, and a few members of Plagge's extended family.

Karl Plagge Saved Jewish Lives Ahead of a Camp Liquidation

He reassigned antisemitic or violent subordinates so that they did not interact with Jewish workers and turned a blind eye to the smuggling and black market that kept the workers alive. Dr Good tracked down survivors and documents to put together a case for Yad Vashem to recognise Plagge's heroism. 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.

HKP 562's commanding officer, Major Karl Plagge, was sympathetic to the plight of his Jewish workers. However, when the Red Army captured Vilnius a few days later, some 250 of the camp's Jews emerged from their hiding places and were the largest single group of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Vilnius. Hundreds rushed to conceal themselves in bunkers, behind false walls, and in hidden recesses in attics. After leaving Vilnius, Plagge led his unit westward and surrendered to the United States Army on 2 May 1945 without suffering a single casualty.

HKP 562 forced labor camp - Wikipedia HKP 562 forced labor camp - Wikipedia

Plagge was the "quasi-sovereign" of his unit, retaining his independence so long as the repair work got done, and worked to insulate his workers from the genocide perpetrated by the SS.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. After graduating from Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium, [2] a secondary school that focused on the classics, Plagge was drafted into the Imperial German Army. In 1941, he was put in command of an engineering unit, Heereskraftfahrpark 562 (vehicle maintenance unit 562, or HKP 562; literally, "Army motor-vehicle park"), which maintained and repaired military vehicles.

Karl Plagge - Krav Maga Karl Plagge - Krav Maga

In spite of the general benevolence of Plagge and his men, the SS controlled the ultimate fate of the HKP laborers. The camp was to be dissolved; accused of being soft on Jews, Plagge was forbidden to take them with his unit. 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. 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. In the aftermath of the April 1943 WarsawGhettouprising and an increase in Sovietpartisan activity, HeinrichHimmler, the head of the SS, decided to liquidate all Nazi ghettos, regardless of the slave labor they provided to the Wehrmacht's war effort.A child survivor of the camp and an American physician, whose mother was saved by Major Plagge, join them. Over half the camp’s prisoners heeded that warning before the SS death squads arrived on July 3, 1944. On 1 September, about 300 of Plagge's workers were seized by the SS for transportation to the Kloogaconcentrationcamp. When his workers were captured during SS sweeps, Plagge attempted to free them from Lukishi Prison before they could be executed at Ponary. Plagge tried to spare as many as he could from this by purposely recruiting Jews instead of Poles for labor.