Major karl plagge biography sampler

Karl Plagge was drafted to the Wehrmacht as an engineer officer in 1939.

Karl Plagge saved hundreds of Jews and Poles from the brutality of the Nazi regime in Lithuania.

Part detective story, part personal quest, Michael Good's book is the story of the German commander of a Lithuanian work camp who saved hundreds of Jewish.

An “exceptional” historical detective story that follows one man's quest to find the German commander who saved his mother—and many other Jews (Booklist).

He joins Oskar Schindler and some other similarly honored Germans who protected and saved Jews during the Holocaust.

Karl Plagge's story.

In German-occupied Wilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania) from 1941, he ran an army vehicle pool (HKP), where military vehicles were repaired. Plagge deployed many Jews from the Wilna ghetto in his workshops. He declared them “necessary for the economy,” which rescued them from being murdered, including a large number of untrained laborers.
When the Jews in the Wilna ghetto were to be deported in the fall of 1943, Plagge arranged with the SS leadership to continue deploying more than 1,000 Jewish forced laborers at the HKP.

He had a camp set up for them.
In July 1944 the HKP’s Jewish forced laborers were to be deported and murdered. Plagge warned the Jews. Around 250 of them managed to break out of the camp or flee to prepared hiding places.
After the war, Karl Plagge was in an American prisoner-of-war camp for th