He also insisted that the men be allowed to bring their wives and children, saying it would be good for morale and pro duction. Dr Good, a family physician who lives in Connecticut, began exploring the story of Plagge after visiting Subocz Street with his mother. You will be escorted during this evacuation by the SS which, as you know, is an organization devoted to the protection of refugees. This is an exceptional story of one man’s bravery and compassion in a world where six million Jews were murdered. On July 1st, 1944 Major Plagge entered the camp and as the prisoners gathered around him, he made an informal speech.

Apparently, approximately 40,000 members of the German army were executed during WWII for expressing similar sentiments! But he could not prevent the SS from seizing 250 children from the camp and murdering them while he was on leave. A partially disabled veteran of World War I, Plagge studied engineering and joined the Nazi Party in 1931 in hopes of helping Germany rebuild from the economic collapse following the war.On March 27, while Plagge was away on home leave, the SS entered the camp and performed a ”kinder action. However, Plagge's collaboration was "arguably a rational choice", because he was able to save more Jews than any other Wehrmacht rescuer in Vilnius. The book is written by a physician - William Good - whose parents - William and Pearl Gdud - were WWII holocaust survivors who fled to this country from Vilna in Lithuania.

On 27 March 1944, while Plagge was away on home leave in Germany, the SS carried out a Kinderaktion ("Children Operation"): they entered the camp, rounded up about 250 children and elderly Jews, and took them to Ponary for execution. Serving initially in Poland after the German invasion, he witnessed atrocities that caused him to decide "to work against the Nazis". In this gripping, emotional work, Good explores the life and legacy of a mysterious German officer who secretly defied his government to save Lithuanian Jews during the Holocaust. I found the most interesting parts of the book were the denazification trial (Appendix A) and whenever the author was quoting a direct source (memoir, letter, etc. The organisation twice rejected his petitions because it was not certain why the major acted as he did.It required only the conviction and strength that anyone can draw from the depth of moral feelings that exists in all humans. This kind of work permit protected the worker, his wife and two of their children from the SS sweeps.

Upon his release, Plagge studied chemical engineering at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, graduating in 1924. 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. When the German army is thrown back from the East, Plagge, still following his own mandate to minimize the number of casualties, surrender his whole unit to the allied forces, with the result that not a single one of his sub-ordinates, finds the chance of a `hero's death'!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. Some of the men were genuine workers, but Plagge also took in hairdressers, academics, kitchen staff and the elderly. 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. Michael Good will lead you to ''ponder humanity's dual nature--our propensity to act violently out of fear and bigotry, juxtaposed against our often unexpected capacity for acting with nobility and moral courage.

It only required a convincing strength that anyone can draw from the depths of a moral conscience everyone has.He was cleared of war crimes after survivors testified at his trial, but he insisted on being classified as a "fellow traveller". He was made a prisoner of war by Britain where he caught Polio, which partially crippled him, so that he needed special shoes. Plagge and his former subordinates told the court about his efforts to help Jewish forced laborers; Plagge's lawyer asked for him to be classified as a fellow traveler rather than an active Nazi.