When the city was liberated by Soviet forces a few days later, some 200 Jews shakily emerged. They represented the largest single group of Jewish survivors in Vilna. Plagge, a veteran of World War I, was initially drawn to the promises of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to rebuild the German economy and national pride during the difficult years that Germany experienced after the signing of the Versailles Treaty. He joined the Nazi Party in 1931 and worked to further its stated goals of national rejuvenation. However, he began to come into conflict with the local party leadership over his refusal to teach Nazi racial theories, which, as a man of science, he did not believe. His continued refusal to espouse the Nazi racial teachings led to accusations that he was a “friend of Jews and Freemasons” by the local Darmstadt Nazi leadership in 1935, and he was removed from his leadership positions in the local party apparatus. [2] Service in Lithuania [ ] Care for his workers [ ] Karl Plagge in 1943. Do not be fooled by the Nazi uniform, this man is a hero, a humanitarian. Remember his name..

Karl Plagge - the Nazi Party member who employed and Karl Plagge - the Nazi Party member who employed and

Good said he sought the Yad Vashem honor for Plagge after he found out the German had no relatives he could thank directly. He told England's Guardian newspaper that during their trip to Vilnius, his mother was "waving her cane around and saying 'He was better than Schindler.'" 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.

Service in World War I

German Army Major Karl Plagge, an Unlikely Hero of the Holocaust from Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project

Karl Plagge - death camps Karl Plagge - death camps

A Jewish survivor, Marek Swirski, recalled how his father and another man were helped by Plagge when an SS officer discovered they were smuggling food. The furious SS officer “drew his gun when suddenly Plagge approached. He asked the SS man to hand the Jews over to him so he could punish them accordingly.” The success of Plagge’s efforts to save Jews is manifested through a survival rate of about 20–25% among those he hired compared with the much lower rate of 3–5% — virtual annihilation — among the rest of Lithuania's Jews. The 250 to 300 surviving Jews of the HKP camp constituted the largest single group of survivors of the genocide in Vilnius. 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. As an officer in the German army, Plagge was put in charge of an engineering unit known as Heereskraftfahrpark (HKP) 562 in 1941. Based in Vilnius, Lithuania, the unit was essentially a forced labour camp. Plagge was appalled by the persecution of Jews in the region, and set about issuing work permits to unskilled Jewish workers so as to deem them ‘essential’ in the eyes of the German state.

Contact

Plagge-Strauss Letters" . http://searchformajorplagge.com/searchformajorplagge.com/Plagge_Documents.html.