He was ideologically a national conservative, but joined the Nazi Party on 1 December 1931. [4] 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. [3] Between 1931 and 1933, Plagge worked as a local organizer for the party. During that interval, the camp was officially owned and administered by the SS, but run on a day-to-day basis by a Wehrmacht engineering unit, Heereskraftfahrpark (HKP) 562 (Army Motor Vehicle Repair Park 562), stationed in Vilnius. HKP 562's commanding officer, Major Karl Plagge, was sympathetic to the plight of his Jewish workers. Plagge and some of his men made efforts to protect the Jews of the camp from the murderous intent of the SS. It was partially due to the covert resistance to the Nazi policy of genocide toward the Jews by members of the HKP 562 engineering unit that over 250 Jewish men, women and children survived the final liquidation of the camp in July 1944, the single largest group of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Vilnius. Establishment [ edit ] St. Peter and St. Paul's Church in Vilnius with a sign pointing to the HKP 562 forced labor camp 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.

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

Witnesses said that in Nazi-occupied Vilna, Major Plagge had hired over twelve hundred Jews to work in his military vehicle repair camp, saving their lives by giving them the yellow “life” certificates that marked them as “indispensable” laborers. Historians note that the April 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising and an increase in Soviet partisan raids convinced SS head Heinrich Himmler to liquidate all Nazi ghettos, regardless of the slave labor they provided to the German war effort. A friend of Plagge’s wrote to Michael Good that the major lived the rest of his life with guilt over his early involvement with Hitler, and because he was convinced that he had done too little to save Jews. This perhaps explains why at his trial he did not ask for exoneration, as some of the judges were inclined to grant him. Instead he asked to be classified as a fellow traveler (sympathizer) to the Nazi regime. In 1942, 200 Jews working for Plagge were rounded up for deportation. Plagge argued with SS-Obersturmführer Rolf Neugebauer in an attempt to secure their release, but was unable to save them. Mass executions in Vilnius (Vilna) and environs were carried out primarily in the Ponary massacre over the period between July 1941 and August 1944, in which 110,000 people were murdered. About 70,000 of these people were Jews of Lithuanian or other nationality; others were deported to Nazi extermination camps. Plagge tried to spare as many as he could from this by purposely recruiting Jews instead of Poles for labor. [9] His success was only partial; his unit had to retreat, thereby removing the slave-labor framework that had protected them until that point. 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.Because he had joined the Nazi Party so early and commanded a labor camp where many prisoners were murdered, he was tried in 1947 as part of the postwar denazification process; he hired a lawyer to defend him. [34] 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. Former prisoners of HKP 562 in a displaced person camp in Ludwigsburg told Maria Eichamueller [ who?] about Plagge's actions. After reading about the trial in a local newspaper, Eichamueller testified on Plagge's behalf, which influenced the trial result in his favor. The court did not exonerate Plagge completely, because it believed that his actions had been motivated by humanitarianism rather than opposition to Nazism. [35] [36] Only about 60 per cent of the Jews worked at the vehicle repair depot or a shop for repairing Wehrmacht uniforms. Plagge established various industries for the rest of his workers, including a rabbit farm, a nursery, and a carpenter’s shop, declaring all of his workers essential to the war effort. He strongly resisted the SS’ efforts to remove these “nonessential” workers.

Yad Vashem to Honor German WWII Officer – DW – 04/11/2005 Yad Vashem to Honor German WWII Officer – DW – 04/11/2005

Todd Neikirk is a New Jersey-based politics, entertainment and history writer. His work has been featured in psfk.com, foxsports.com, politicususa.com and hillreporter.com. He enjoys sports, politics, comic books, and anything that has to do with history.

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. It elicited Plagge’s admission of shame and guilt at having contributed to the rise of the Nazi regime. The SS were no fools. The risk for Plagge was that he would be accused of favouring Jews, and this was really a very serious offence." To date, the country has given the award to 20,570 people. Just 410 of them were German, and of these, just a handful were military personnel. On Monday, thanks to the historical research efforts of a child of concentration camp survivors, German army officer named Karl Plagge will be posthumously given the award.