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.

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

The camp was to be dissolved; accused of being soft on Jews, Plagge was forbidden to take them with his unit.Another 100 Jews were smuggled in by the resistance movement with Plagge's acquiescence, and the population peaked at 1,250 early in 1944. Although unable to stop the SS from liquidating the remaining prisoners in July 1944, Plagge managed to warn the prisoners in advance, allowing about 200 to hide from the SS and survive until the Red Army's capture of Vilnius.

Honour for German major who saved 250 Jews - The Guardian

The source code for the WIKI 2 extension is being checked by specialists of the Mozilla Foundation, Google, and Apple. He was there to honor a Nazi who'd run a slave labor camp, as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. The organisation twice rejected his petitions because it was not certain why the major acted as he did. 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.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. Serving initially in Poland after the German invasion, he witnessed atrocities that caused him to decide "to work against the Nazis". For example, “on multiple occasions, HKP personnel loaned trucks and drivers to the SS for the purpose of transporting Jews to Ponary for execution. 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. The 250 to 300 surviving Jews of the HKP camp constituted the largest single group of survivors of the genocide in Vilnius.

Karl Plagge | Military Wiki | Fandom Karl Plagge | Military Wiki | Fandom

At first, Plagge employed Jews who lived inside the ghetto, but when the ghetto was slated for liquidation in September 1943, he set up the HKP562forcedlaborcamp, where he saved many male Jews by issuing them official work permits on the false premise that their holders' skills were vital for the German war effort, and also made efforts to save the worker's wives and children by claiming they would work better if their families were alive.

After the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, decided to liquidate all ghettos.

Karl Plagge - Krav Maga Karl Plagge - Krav Maga

The SS ultimately succeeded in murdering about 900 – 1000 of Plagge’s 1,250 [10] slave-laborers between the Kinder-Aktion and the final liquidation of the camp. I felt, there were these Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and they said this man saved their lives. Moreover, it takes perhaps a bit of goodwill, occasionally a good idea, and dedication to the task at hand. In her memories, the German commandant embodied a heroic, larger-than-life image—a stern but humane Nazi officer who schemed to keep Jews from being killed.Knowing that the camp would be liquidated before the Red Army arrived, the Jews made hiding places in the camp in secret bunkers, in walls, and in the rafters of the attic. In February 2006, the former Frankensteinkaserne, a Bundeswehr base in Pfungstadt, Germany, was renamed the Karl-Plagge-Kaserne. Former prisoners of HKP 562 in a displaced person camp in Ludwigsburg told Maria Eichamueller [ who? However, Plagge's collaboration was "arguably a rational choice", because he was able to save more Jews than any other Wehrmacht rescuer in Vilnius.