year old Pearl later described how she found a hiding place underneath the stairwell and crouched there in horror listening to the shrieks and cries of the doomed children. 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.

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

Israel's Holocaust memorial council, Yad Vashem, will declare Major Karl Plagge righteous among the nations, alongside men such as Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler, for an elaborate deception that saved about 250 Jewish lives. Published tributes to the late Dr. William Good, a Holocaust survivor and beloved family physician in La Puente, CA., who passed away last month, prompted interest not only in his remarkable wartime odyssey but also that of his devoted wife, Pearl, who survives him. This was not the first time Plagge had saved their lives, Pearl told her family. “He kept us alive for months by setting up a military vehicle repair camp where he protected us. He brought almost a thousand people so close to survival,” Pearl told her son, Michael, who later embarked on a campaign to identify the major and learn his story. Major Plagge at great risk to himself brought all of us so close to survival – liberation was just ten days away. He risked being executed for protecting “worthless Jews” as tragically happened to Wehrmacht Captain Anton Schmidt, who helped my aunt Reichel Cholem hide during the “ gele sheinen aktion (yellow life-certificates massacre). Plagge had just saved some 250 lives. And that was the tip of an iceberg. So let's learn more about this Nazi officer, Karl Plagge: He'd served in WW-I until the British captured him. Afterward, he'd studied chemical engineering at Darmstadt. And he joined the new Nazi party. That lasted until he'd heard their crazy ideas about race. Then he withdrew from active involvement.

The aftermath of Plagge’s actions

He succeeded in getting authorization to establish the HKP work camp outside the perimeters of the ghetto and snatched us out of the ghetto just days before its liquidation. Our camp was under the administration of the Nazi SS, but the technical management of the workshops was in the hands of the Wehrmacht, under Major Plagge and his two subordinates. But the honour has only been bestowed after a long campaign by Mrs Good's son, Michael. Dr Good, a family physician who lives in Connecticut, began exploring the story of Plagge after visiting Subocz Street with his mother. Originally a Lutheran, Plagge lost his belief in God as a result of the atrocities he witnessed during the Holocaust. It took Good six years of long-distance searching to find other survivors from Plagge's life-saving scheme, but eventually he succeeded. Along with Marianne Viefhaus, an archivist from the University of Darmstadt in Germany, he was able to complete the picture of a German whose courage saved several hundred Jews from certain death. He was ideologically a national conservative, but joined the Nazi Party on 1 December 1931. [4] Many years later, during his denazification trial, Plagge stated that he was initially drawn to the promises of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to rebuild the German economy and national pride, which suffered during the years that Germany experienced after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. [3] Between 1931 and 1933, Plagge worked as a local organizer for the party.

Honour for German major who saved 250 Jews - The Guardian

And you know full well how well the S.S. takes care of their Jewish prisoners…” he added meaningfully. 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. Plagge Denazification Trial Transcript. p. 36 . http://searchformajorplagge.com/searchformajorplagge.com/Plagge_Documents.html. A number of the workers' last memories of Plagge was shortly before the Red Army was to enter Vilnius, in July 1944. According to several survivors, Plagge performed one last heroic act. In the presence of SS officers, he gave the prisoners a veiled warning when he said they would be "escorted during this evacuation by the SS, which, as you know, is an organization devoted to the protection of refugees. Thus, there's nothing to worry about." Plagge-Strauss Letters" . http://searchformajorplagge.com/searchformajorplagge.com/Plagge_Documents.html.He made sure we had decent working and living conditions. In the room which we shared with others, there was running water and a kitchen stove enabling us to cook. We slept in beds with blankets and linen and were able to wash and keep clean.

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

In 1942, 200 Jews working for Plagge were rounded up for deportation. Plagge argued with SS-Obersturmführer Rolf Neugebauer in an attempt to secure their release, but was unable to save them. Plagge Denazification Trial Transcript. p. 31 . http://searchformajorplagge.com/searchformajorplagge.com/Plagge_Documents.html. 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 T his Wikipedia article describes Plagge's forced labor camp. The camp was actually located within the (now Capital) Lithuanian city of Vilnius. Polish forces had taken the city, and a region surrounding it, during the Russian Revolution in the wake of WW-I. They'd created a separate. Polish-controlled "Republic of Central Lithuania" that included Vilnius. That region was under dispute between Poland and Lithuania when Germany invaded Poland and this "Republic" in 1939. The "camp" was actually situated in a set of buildings within Vilnius. 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.

Service in World War I

Plagge was tried before an Allied denazification 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. Plagge died ten years after the trial. She never talked to us about how she survived, but there she told me about this mysterious officer, Major Plagge, who she said saved her life and the lives of her parents and 250 other Jewish prisoners," he said. German Army Major Karl Plagge, an Unlikely Hero of the Holocaust from Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project

Karl Plagge 60 Years Later, Honoring the German Army Maj. Karl Plagge

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. 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.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. Although Plagge claimed upon his return that he would have saved the children if he had been present, it is doubtful that he could have done so, historians say. The harsh reality was that the SS controlled the ultimate fate of the camp’s Jews. The judges may have been reluctant to recognize the extent of Plagge's humanitarian achievements because they cast a bad light on the indifference of ordinary Germans to the Holocaust and the retention of Nazi judges in the postwar judicial system. [37] Karl Plagge ( pronounced [kaʁl ˈplaɡə] ⓘ; 10 July 1897 – 19 June 1957) was a GermanArmy officer who rescued Jews during the HolocaustinLithuania by issuing work permits to non-essential workers. A partially disabled veteran of WorldWarI, Plagge studied engineering and joined the NaziParty 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.