{"id":31334,"date":"2019-01-11T03:49:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T11:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=31334"},"modified":"2019-01-17T10:16:08","modified_gmt":"2019-01-17T18:16:08","slug":"a-nazi-who-saved-jews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/01\/11\/a-nazi-who-saved-jews\/","title":{"rendered":"A Nazi who saved Jews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the apartment buildings at the\nHKP complex. (photo from Richard Freund)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly three-quarters of a century after the Shoah ended, we are still learning about aspects of what happened. For example, the documentary The Good Nazi<\/em> tells the little-known story of a Nazi from Vilna who tried to rescue more than 1,200 Jews. It airs on VisionTV Jan. 21, and again April 29.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2005, Dr. Michael Good sought out Prof.\nRichard Freund of the University of Hartford to tell him about Maj. Karl\nPlagge, a Nazi who oversaw a military vehicle repair complex that was used as\ncover for 1,257 Jews in Vilnius (Vilna). Good described how his father, mother\nand grandfather were saved within this complex, and later wrote about it at\nlength in his 2006 book The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews<\/em>\n(Fordham University Press).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While interesting to Freund, who works within a\ndepartment known for its Holocaust studies, nothing further came of that\nmeeting. That is, until 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By then, Freund had directed six archeological\nprojects in Israel and three in Europe on behalf of the university, including\nresearch at the extermination camp at Sobibor, Poland. In 2015, he was in\nLithuania doing research on a Holocaust-era escape tunnel, adjacent to the\nGreat Synagogue of Vilna. He and his team had brought with them specialized\nequipment that enabled non-invasive examination of the ground and walls, and\nthey offered it to anyone wanting to do such research. The Vilna Gaon State\nJewish Museum came calling, and brought Freund to a site on the outskirts of\nVilna, where he was told about Plagge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"photo
Nazi Maj. Karl Plagge oversaw a military vehicle repair complex that he used to try and save 1,257 Jews in Vilnius. (photo from Richard Freund)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Of that moment, Freund told the Independent<\/em>,\n\u201cI\u2019m sitting there and I say, \u2018Karl Plagge? I know that name!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Freund connected with survivor Sidney Handler,\nwho was 10 years old when he hid from the Nazis in the work camp. After the\nNazis left in July 1944, Handler was forced to move dead bodies, and could\npoint out decades later where 400 Jews were buried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe could have gone through the entire 20 acres\nand not located exactly where that was,\u201d said Freund. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using scanners, thermal cameras, radar and\nother methods, Freund\u2019s team discovered and recorded the various hiding places,\nalso called malinas. Under Plagge\u2019s plan, Jews had built malinas in building\ncrevices, behind the walls, to keep out of sight when Nazis came to \u201cliquidate\u201d\nthe complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The garage (repair shop) was dubbed HKP. It was\non Subocz Street and is likely the only Holocaust-related labour camp left\ncompletely intact. Until recently, people had been living in the two six-floor\nbuildings, which comprised 216 apartments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Freund reached out to filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, telling him how important it was to document the site, the story, and reveal it to the world. Things were made all the more pressing when Freund and Jacobovici discovered that developers were going to demolish the site. Fortunately, before this happened, Jacobovici took a film and photographic crew to HKP, in January 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Turning of Plagge<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In 1941, Karl Plagge was placed in command of\nthe HKP 562, a unit responsible for repairs of military vehicles damaged on the\neastern front. Plagge experienced something of a pang of conscience \u2013 he hadn\u2019t\nsigned on to genocide. He made the decision to leverage his position and use\nJews as \u201cslave labour\u201d for HKP, pleading the case to his superiors that, if\nJews didn\u2019t work there, there would be no one to fix the vehicles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virtually none of the 1,200 Jews was knowledgeable\nin fixing cars; they were accountants, lawyers, hairdressers, academics, cooks\nand others. They all learned various HKP tasks on the job, and Plagge somehow\nconvinced the Nazi SS that every single one of them was necessary for HKP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though the entire charade was met with a\nbarely tolerated wink and nod by Nazi brass, Plagge had a deep (and correct)\nhunch that their patience would eventually wear thin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS,\nannounced, in the summer of 1943, that he wanted every Jew in Eastern Europe\neliminated, irrespective of whether they were contributing to the war effort in\na work camp. So, with Plagge\u2019s approval, his workers carved out malinas in the\nwalls of the buildings and in attic rafters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Soviet Red Army approached the outer\nedge of Vilnius in June 1944, it was a sign that the Allies were nearing\nvictory. In this context, on July 1, 1944, Plagge made an impromptu\nannouncement in front of an SS commander and the Jewish workers, who gathered\nto listen. He explained that his unit was being transferred westbound and,\nthough he requested his labourers be allowed to join, his superiors wouldn\u2019t\npermit it. All of this was code for the Jewish prisoners to take cover. Roughly\nhalf of the workers \u2013 some 500 of them \u2013 hid away in malinas or ran from the\ncamp, while others decided to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"photo
A monument placed recently at the complex to honour Karl Plagge and memorialize the Jews who were killed at HKP. (photo from Richard Freund)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When Nazi troops took over the camp two days\nlater, 500 Jewish workers appeared for roll call, and were killed. It took the\nNazis three more days to comb the camp and the surrounding area for any\nsurvivors, eventually finding roughly 200 Jews, all of whom were shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Soviets finally took over Vilnius\nlater that week, approximately 250 of HKP\u2019s Jews in hiding emerged. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the war was over, Plagge returned home to\nDarmstadt, Germany, where, for the next two years he lived quietly, until he\nwas brought to court as a former Nazi. Somehow, word traveled to a displaced\npersons camp in Stuttgart, a three-hour drive away, where many survivors of HKP\nhad ended up. In Plagge\u2019s defence, the survivors sent a representative to\ntestify to the court in the hopes the charges would be overturned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The testimony resulted in a favourable judgment, and Plagge received the status of an exonerated person. In 2005, after evidence and survivor testimony, Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre posthumously bestowed the title Righteous Among the Nations on Plagge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Good Nazi<\/em> was produced in Canada for VisionTV by Toronto-based Associated Producers. Jacobovici was writer and executive producer, Moses Znaimer executive producer, Bienstock producer and co-director, Yaron Niski co-director and Felix Golubev line producer\/executive producer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dave Gordon<\/strong> is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in\nmore than 100 publications around the world.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the apartment buildings at the HKP complex. (photo from Richard Freund) Nearly three-quarters of a century after the Shoah ended, we are still learning about aspects of what happened. For example, the documentary The Good Nazi tells the little-known story of a Nazi from Vilna who tried to rescue more than 1,200 Jews. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[6010,53,8620,2038,8480,8619,3803],"class_list":["post-31334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-documentary","tag-holocaust","tag-karl-plagge","tag-nazis","tag-righteous-among-the-nations","tag-visiontv","tag-yad-vashem"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}