The Search for Major Plagge,: The Nazi Who Saved Jews
Good, the son of two Holocaust survivors from Vilna, Lithuania, informs us that Karl Plagge, a German army officer, saved his mother and more than 250 other Jews. In September 1991, Good traveled to Vilna, looking for Plagge, who had been in charge of a military vehicle repair unit there from 1941 to 1944. Plagge had died in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1957. As the anti-Jewish policies of the Nazis increased in intensity through the 1930s, Plagge experienced increasing guilt about what was happening; in early 1939, Plagge realized the Nazis were pushing the country into another world war. His primary method of resistance against the genocide was to give work permits to Jews, allowing them to save themselves and their families from theaktionsthat swept the Vilna ghettos. He kept up the guise that he needed these skilled Jewish workers, although many of them were unskilled. This is an exceptional story of one man's bravery and compassion in a world where six million Jews were murdered.George CohenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved