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

Product Information

During this crucial period Plagge made huge bureaucratic efforts to form a free standing HKP562 labor camp on the outskirts of Vilnius. Some of the men were genuine workers, but Plagge also took in hairdressers, academics, kitchen staff and the elderly. According to his later testimony, Plagge refused to accept Nazi racial theories, which he considered unscientific, and was disgusted by the persecution of political opponents and the corruption of many Nazi functionaries.

In Yad Vashem's view, Plagge's efforts to save Jewish workers and treat them humanely were probably related to serving the German war effort. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, HKP 562 was deployed to Vilna, Lithuania, in early July 1941.He fought as a lieutenant in World War I on the Western Front, participating in the battles of the Somme, Verdun, and Flanders.

It only required a convincing strength that anyone can draw from the depths of a moral conscience everyone has. He decided it was his duty to try and work against the genocidal regime he unknowingly helped put in to power. Serving initially in Poland after the German invasion, he witnessed atrocities that caused him to decide "to work against the Nazis". In 1941, he was put in command of an engineering unit, Heereskraftfahrpark 562 (vehicle maintenance unit 562, or HKP 562; literally, "Army motor-vehicle park"), which maintained and repaired military vehicles. He also insisted that the men be allowed to bring their wives and children, saying it would be good for morale and pro duction.This kind of work permit protected the worker, his wife, and up to two of his children from the SS sweeps carried out in the Vilna Ghetto, in which Jews without work papers were captured and killed at the nearby Ponary execution grounds. Whatever you do, do not put the book away until you read the letters that Major Plagge wrote to the attorney in the appendix of the book.