Karl Plagge
| Karl Plagge | |
|---|---|
Plagge in December 1943
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| Born |
10 July 1897 Darmstadt, Germany |
| Died | 19 June 1957 (aged 59) Darmstadt |
| Monuments |
Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem, Israel Major-Karl-Plagge barracks, Pfungstadt, Germany |
| Residence | Darmstadt |
| Nationality | German |
| Alma mater | Technical University of Darmstadt |
| Occupation | mechanical engineer, army officer |
| Known for | saving Jews from the Holocaust |
| Political party | National Socialist |
Karl Plagge (10 July 1897, in Darmstadt — 19 June 1957 in Darmstadt) was a major, engineer and Nazi Party member who during World War II used his position as a staff officer in the German Army to employ and protect some 1,240Jews — 500 men, the others women and children, in order to give them a better chance to survive the nearly total annihilation of Lithuania’s Jews that took place between 1941–1944.
Plagge, a veteran of World War I, was initially drawn to the promises of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to rebuild the German economy and national pride during the difficult years that Germany experienced after the signing of the Versailles Treaty. He joined the Nazi Party in 1931 and worked to further its stated goals of national rejuvenation. However, he began to come into conflict with the local party leadership over his refusal to teach Nazi racial theories, which, as a man of science, he did not believe. His continued refusal to espouse the Nazi racial teachings led to accusations that he was a “friend of Jews and Freemasons” by the local Darmstadt Nazi leadership in 1935, and he was removed from his leadership positions in the local party apparatus.
Plagge graduated from the Technical University of Darmstadt in 1924 with a degree in engineering. On being drafted into the Heer at the beginning of World War II, he was put in command of an engineering unit, Heereskraftfahrpark 562 ("Army Vehicle Park 562"; HKP 562), which maintained and repaired military vehicles.
In July 1941, during the German invasion of the Soviet Union, HKP 562 was deployed to Vilnius (Vilna), Lithuania. Plagge soon witnessed the genocide being carried out against the Jews of the area. Plagge would later testify that "I saw unbelievable things that I could not support...it was then that I began to work against the Nazis".
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Wikipedia