Major Karl Plagge - Wehrmacht, 19 June 1957.

[Louis]

Major Karl Plagge (July 10, 1897, in Darmstadt — June 19, 1957 in Darmstadt) was a German officer and Nazi Party member who during World War II used his position as a staff officer in the Heer to employ and protect some 1,240 jews — 500 men, the others women and children, in order to give them a better chance to survive the nearly total annihilation of Lithuania’s Jews that took place between 1941–1944.-

Plagge served as an officer of the Wermacht in Vilna (Vilnius) from June 1941 to June 1944. While stationed in Vilnius he was in charge of a repair facility for military vehicles (HKP 562), where hundreds of Jews worked. According to the brutal decimation policy adopted by the SS in occupied Lithuania, the first to be slated for extermination were the "unproductive" jews. Employment at Plagge's HKP unit thus offered a chance for survival.-

Plagge treated his workers well, and included many people who were not qualified as mechanics to work there in order to save them from deportation; among the Jews of Vilna it was known that if one wanted a chance to survive, the only option was to work in Plagge's plant.-

In the last days of June 1944, on the eve of the German evacuation of Vilnius, Plagge assembled his jewish workers and warned them in thinly veiled language that they were going to be handed over to the care of the SS. Some managed to escape and/or hide and some 200 survived.-

Plagge after the war

Karl Plagge died in 1957 and was posthumously recognized by the Yad Vashem Committee on July 22, 2004.

 

[Louis]

Survivor Pearl Good (photo), made the following statement about Plagge's actions:

"My Father had worked in the HKP workshop even before we were put into the ghetto and his Facharbeiter Schein had saved him from the “Khapuny –the grabbers.

After we were put into the ghetto on September 6th, 1941, Father would be let out of the ghetto daily and march to work at the H.K.P. work-shops. Father’s “gele schein” –“skilled worker” yellow life certificate from HKP (even though my Father was far from skilled) saved us and kept us alive until September 1943 and the “Four Days” Aktzye to Estonia when the HKP schein could not protect us any more.

Major Plagge went to the station and ordered his workers and their families off the train to the slate mines and gave them military protection; however, the highest SD officer ordered the military guard to bring them back to the train. Afterwards there was a serious clash between Plagge and the SD officer, Plagge was furious and desperate.

We managed to hide and survive this Aktzye. Major Plagge was determined to protect his remaining Jewish workers and their families. To do this he needed to establish a work-camp since the ghetto was about to be liquidated. It was rumored that to achieve this Plagge traveled to Berlin to convince the authorities that his highly skilled Jews were indispensable for the Army Vehicle Repair – a bare-faced lie which, if discovered, could have ended in Plagge’s execution."

holocaustresearchproject.org

 

[Sempai]

Sounds like Schindler´s List. Salute for Plagge!