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

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According to the testimonies of survivors, the Nazis executed hundreds of prisoners on the side of the Western building where bodies were then hastily buried in shallow pits.

History on the Net. Nazi Germany—SchutzStaffel SS. 2022. Available online: https://www.historyonthenet.com/nazi-germany-schutzstaffel-ss (accessed on 15 November 2022).On Saturday, July 1 st 1944, Major Plagge came to talk to us. He told us the German army was leaving Vilna because of the approaching Russians, and our camp too would be evacuated. Major Plagge informed us that we would be entirely in the hands of the SS. By all accounts, the ceremony would not be taking place if Dr. Good had not grown curious six years ago how his parents had survived those years, when so many other Jews from Vilna had perished. (The city, which changed hands several times, was called Vilna by the Russians and Vilnius by the Lithuanians.)

After leaving Vilnius, Plagge led his unit westward and surrendered to the United States Army on 2 May 1945 without suffering a single casualty. [33]

Plagge's godson Konrad Hesse will be at today's ceremony, along with the Good family and survivors of Subocz Street. About a dozen plan to go on to the major's home town, Darmstadt, to honour him there. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Plagge was transferred to become commander of the Heeres-Kraftfahr-Park (HKP) 562 (army car pool) in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital that had been part of Poland before the war. After the occupation of the city on June 24, 1941, the Germans, along with the collaborating Lithuanian authorities, proceeded to persecute the Jewish population. In July, 5,000 Jewish males were rounded up and executed by members of a German Einsatzgruppe (Special Action Squad) and Lithuanian collaborators in a forest near the village of Ponary. Early September, 2 ghetto's were established in Vilnius. Towards the end of 1941, the smallest one had already been completely liquidated and 35,000 Jews were murdered.

Claiming that he needed additional workers, Plagge brought 100 arrested Jews into HKP. Another 100 Jews were smuggled in by the resistance movement with Plagge’s consent, and the population peaked at 1,250 early in 1944, according to historian Kim Priemal. Plagge, an engineer, joined the Nazi party in 1931 in the belief that it would restore Germany's fortunes, but he became disillusioned with its racial ideology. By 1938, he was godfather to a boy called Konrad Hesse who had a half-Jewish mother, and had left the party. Life is so unbearable here, I can hardly come to grips with it. As a National Socialist, I am expected to say “yes” to mass slaughter… As a human being I know this is insanity and will lead to utter devastation. He was cleared of war crimes after survivors testified at his trial, but he insisted on being classified as a "fellow traveller".In September 1943 it became clear to Plagge that the Vilna Ghetto was soon to be liquidated. All the remaining Jews in the ghetto were to be taken by the SS, regardless of any working papers they had. In this crucial period Plagge made extraordinary bureaucratic efforts to form a free-standing HKP562 Slave Labor Camp on Subocz Street on the outskirts of Vilnius. Evidence shows that he not only tried to protect his productive male workers, but also made vigorous efforts to protect the women and children in his camp, actively overcoming considerable resistance from local SS officers. [4] [5] On September 16, 1943, Plagge transported over 1,000 of his Jewish workers and their families from the Vilna Ghetto to the newly built HKP camp on Subocz Street, where they remained in relative safety. [6] Less than a week later, on September 23, 1943, the SS liquidated the Vilna Ghetto. The rest of Vilna's Jews were either executed immediately at the nearby execution grounds in the Paneriai (Ponary) Forest, or sent to death camps in Nazi occupied Europe. [7] Plagge’s efforts are corroborated by survivor testimony, historical documents found in Germany, and Plagge’s own testimony found in a letter he wrote in 1957, a year before his death. In this letter he compares himself with the character of Dr. Rieux in Albert Camus' novel The Plague and describes his hopeless struggle against a plague of death that slowly envelops the inhabitants of his city. [11] Post-war [ ]

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