Plagge Karl

Plagge, Karl Karl Plagge was born in Darmstadt in 1897. His father, a family doctor, died when Karl was barely six years old. Plagge attended high school at the prestigious Georg-Wilhelm-Gymnasium, but later had to abandon his original plans of also becoming a doctor for lack of money. In 1916, during World War I, he was drafted into the military. After his discharge in November 1918, he studied mechanical engineering and chemistry at the Technical University in Darmstadt. Although he completed his studies and became a qualified engineer, the ever-worsening economic crisis made it extremely difficult for him to earn a living. To make matters worse, he was partially disabled from a bout of polio in 1924. Under the pressure of the economic and political crisis of the early 1930s, Plagge was taken in by Nazi propaganda and its tempting promises. On December 1, 1931 he joined the Nazi Party, convinced that he was “serving a good cause”. However, his early enthusiasm turned into revulsion when, after 1933, the regime began to show its true face. In 1932, Plagge had made the acquaintance of Kurt Hesse, who ran a factory for electrical machinery. In 1934, he joined the Hessen Works, first as a consultant and later as a project manager and development engineer. Hesse, whose wife was of Jewish origin, came under more and more pressure from the new Nazi regime. Plagge – as Hesse testified later – gave him moral support in his distress. In 1935, at the insistence of the Nazi Party’s District Leader, Plagge assumed the office of “block chief,” and a year later became the honorary head of adult education of the German Labor Front. However, since he refused to attend the prescribed ideological classes, a clash with the District Course Head soon followed. The latter accused Plagge of “watering down the idea” and of mixing “practically exclusively with people related to Jews and Freemasons.” But Plagge did not allow himself to be browbeaten and refused to break off hisfriendly ties with Hesse and his Jewish wife. Shortly after Kristallnacht pogrom on November 9-10, 1938, he also acted as godfather to Hesse’s son, who was considered a “Mischling (mixed race) of the first degree.” This was an unheard-of affront to Nazi ideology and its racist teachings, particularly on the part of a Party comrade. With the outbreak of war in September 1939, Plagge was immediately drafted into the Wehrmacht. He was already over 40 and disabled, but he was also a qualified engineer and an officer in the reserves. During the war, he was promoted from lieutenant to major and assigned as commander of an army motor vehicle depot (HKP) with responsibility for military vehicle maintenance. Soon after the Wehrmacht occupied Lithuania at the end of June 1941, Plagge reached Wilno (today Vilnius, Lithuania) with his unit – HKP 562. Being employed by the Germans provided – albeit temporary – for Wilno Jews, who had been penned into the ghetto since September 6, 1941, a chance to survive. As commander of motor vehicle depot 562, Plagge employed over 1,000 Jewish workers including their closest relatives, who in this way managed to avoid certain death. He was very generous when issuing certificates of employment. According to the testimony of lawyer Alfred Stumpf, who served as first lieutenant at HKP 562 from June 16 to October 2, 1942, many of the civilian workers could scarcely be used for the actual jobs performed by a auto repair workshop – hairdressers, shoemakers, tailors and kitchen personnel, as well as women responsible for clearing-up and gardening operations. Another HKP soldier, Christian Bartholomae, testified that in September 1941 Plagge ordered him to release two Jews from the Lukisczki jail. “A few days later it was the parents of two Jewish hairdressers whom I released on Plagge’s instructions from the custody of the Security Service (SD).” Several witnesses also remembered how Plagge issued certificates to a Jewish doctor, Dr. Wolfsohn,and his 75-year-old father as motor vehicle mechanics, thereby enabling them to avoid deportation. In Plagge’s official reports, all of these individuals were disguised as skilled workers. At first, Plagge’s Jewish workforce continued to live in the ghetto. On his explicit orders, they were treated decently and humanely. He also tried to supplement the inadequate rations that they received in the ghetto. According to the testimony of first sergeant Georg Raab, Plagge set up a hospital for the vehicle depot, “for the personnel, including relatives (c. 40 beds), to be supplied with army medications.” Ghetto Vilna survivor William Beigel-Begell, b.1927, stated that Plagge’s name was known throughout the entire ghetto. “He became famous for his decent treatment of his Jewish workers and constant arguments with the SD, SS and Gestapo in order to keep his workforce intact.” Other survivors, such as Pearl Good, testified about Plagge’s humane conduct. The last critical phase for the Jewish population in the Vilna ghetto began in the summer of 1943, when Himmler, after two years of apparent stability, ordered the final liquidation of the ghettos in the Reich Commissariat for the Eastern Territories. As revealed by recently discovered documents from the war period, Plagge negotiated with the top SD leadership in Riga in order to protect his Jewish workers and their families during the upcoming dissolution of the ghetto. He managed to get some 500 Jewish workers excluded from deportation, subject to the condition (undoubtedly laid down by the Security Service) that they “be put to work in a closed concentration camp”. Plagge’s innate humanity is reflected in the following case he made in February 1944: “Since the Jewish workers’ motivation and the keenness that they show at work largely relied on not only the men, but also their wives and children being able to remain in Vilna, with the explicit agreement of the SD, the associated women and children are also to be keptbehind and transferred to the Subotschstrasse labor camp”. This closed labor camp, which consisted of two large houses (“blocks”), was set up on September 17, 1943. A week later, the ghetto was liquidated. After that, the total number of Jews still living in Wilno was just 3,000, located in four closed labor locations, with over a third of them at the HKP camp. In February 1944, there were still 1,243 at Plagge’s camp: 499 men, 554 women, and 190 children. Plagge was really only responsible for the HKP workshop; the labor camp was subject to the direct supervision of the SS and the SD. In June 1944, the end of the German occupation was in sight as the Red Army was at the gates of the city. In the general retreat, Plagge’s unit was also due to be withdrawn from Wilno to East Prussia. On June 30, Plagge gave a speech to the assembled workers in the presence of the SS officers, announcing the upcoming move. He “reassured” them – according to the accounts of a number of witnesses – with the cynical assurance that they would be accompanied by the SS, which “as you are undoubtedly aware is an organization which protects refugees.” For some 500 of the thousand camp inmates this was an unmistakable indication that they should break out of the camp that very evening or conceal themselves in hiding places that they had prepared in advance. Around 200 of them held out until the Red Army arrived a few days later. They owe their lives to Wehrmacht Major Karl Plagge. In his negotiations with the SD, Plagge had limited room for maneuver and had to follow basic rules. He had to camouflage his actions as efforts for the benefit of the Wehrmacht and the war effort. He had to walk a dangerous tightrope, such as when issuing forged certificates to some as vehicle mechanics. In a case attested to by first Sergeant Raabe, Plagge took the risk – as it turned out, in vain – of an open confrontation with the SD when he tried, with the help of a military escort, to release some 100 Jewsfrom the train deporting them to the Estonian slate mines. There are a number of explanations for Plagge’s extraordinary acts – a humanist upbringing, liberal-mindedness, and an old-fashioned military moral code – but there is almost certainly no entirely satisfactory answer. It was probably above all his unusual independence of mind, the rejection of any form of indoctrination. This conduct presupposed a degree of ethical independence, which contrasted sharply with the traditional German values of obedience and respect for authority. In the history of the Holocaust, Karl Plagge is a practically unparalleled instance of a Wehrmacht officer who as an individual dared to oppose the machinery of extermination. On July 22, 2004, Yad Vashem recognized Karl Plagge as Righteous Among the Nations.