Karl Plagge

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Karl Plagge (around 1943)
Bust of Karl Plagge in the school yard of the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium
Inscription and bronze plaque by Ariel Auslender in the entrance area of ​​the Major Karl Plagge barracks near Darmstadt
Pearl Good, rescued by Karl Plagge, points to the name Plagges on the wall of the righteous in the Yad Vashem

Karl Eduard Adolf Theodoric Plagge (* 10. July 1897 in Darmstadt , † 19 June 1957 ) was a German officer of the Wehrmacht , last Major , who during the Second World War, at least 250 assigned to it Jewish forced laborers before the assassination in the Vilna Ghetto of National Socialism preserved.

His work as a rescuer of the Jews was not fully documented until more than 40 years after his death and in 2004 he was honored as Righteous Among the Nations .

Life

Karl Plagge was born in 1897 as the son of the Darmstadt doctor Theoderich Plagge (1862-1904) and his wife Marie Johanne Luise (Mareike). Born von Bechtold. He attended the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium and, after graduating from high school in 1916, was drafted into military service in the First World War. He was used in the battles in Verdun , the Somme and Flanders . He fell into British captivity, from which he did not return to Darmstadt until 1919. From the winter semester of 1919/20 he studied mechanical engineering at the TH Darmstadt until 1924 . After various activities in the economy, he completed an apprenticeship in medicinal chemistry before he was employed as a consulting engineer at the Hessenwerke machine factory in Darmstadt in 1934.

He was a member of the NSDAP from 1931 to 1939 . Little by little, Plagge realized that the Nazi regime was criminally inciting war. There were disputes with the district trainer. Finally he resigned from the NSDAP. In September 1939 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht as an engineer officer. As a major , from 1941 Plagge was in charge of the Army Motor Vehicle Park (HKP) 562 East in Vilnius, Lithuania .

Thanks to his constant efforts to bring Jews from the Vilnius ghetto to his labor camp and also to keep the families together, about 250 of the more than 1000 Jews imprisoned were able to survive the Holocaust . He realized in good time that the Jews could only be saved if they performed indispensable work. The establishment of a labor camp went back to his initiative and also the settlement of private textile companies to create jobs for the women. In the camps, completely uneducated workers were also classified as "essential to the war effort", which saved them from being attacked by the SS .

Two weeks before Vilnius was retaken by the Red Army during the Soviet summer offensive Operation Bagration , Plagge, in the presence of the SS commander planned to replace him, warned the slave laborers in a speech on July 1, 1944 of the impending takeover of the camp by the SS on the following Day. Some prisoners managed to escape from the camp immediately afterwards. About 500 prisoners could not hide in time and were shot by the SS on July 3, 1944 in Aukštieji Paneriai (Ponary in Polish). Other prisoners were discovered and murdered by the SS when the camp was liquidated. However, due to Plagge's warning, around 250 people managed to survive in hiding places they had prepared themselves until the Red Army occupied Vilnius, which Adolf Hitler had declared a “fixed place” . At his own request, he was classified as a follower in the denazification process , although he should be classified as exonerated by the ruling chamber .

Like Oskar Schindler , he reproached himself for saving too few people until his death. Karl Plagge died of heart failure in Darmstadt on June 19, 1957 . He was buried in the old cemetery in Darmstadt.

Karl Plagge was married to Anke Madsen (1905–1987) since 1933. The marriage remained childless.

Honors

At the initiative of survivors and their descendants under the leadership of the American Michael Good, Plagge was awarded the honorary title of “Righteous Among the Nations” on April 11, 2005. Applications for this honor in 2000 and 2002 had been rejected.

On January 24, 2008 he was honored with the Lifesaver Medal by the Carnegie Foundation for Lifesavers Germany .

Honors in Darmstadt and the surrounding area:

  • In front of the former Senate Hall of the Technical University of Darmstadt in the old main building on Hochschulstrasse, a memorial plaque has been commemorating him since June 18, 2003.
Memorial plaque for Karl Plagge in front of the former Senate Hall of the TU Darmstadt, old main building
  • On February 10, 2006, the former Frankenstein barracks in Pfungstadt near Darmstadt was renamed Major Karl Plagge barracks .
  • Since February 10, 2006, there has been a bust of Plagge (see picture) by the sculptor Gerhard Roese in the school yard of the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium .
  • On May 4, 2017, the Technical University of Darmstadt opened a new building named after Karl Plagge.

Karl Plagge Award

The Karl Plagge Award is a prize - donated by descendants of Karl Plagge's family - for school classes in Lithuania who have dealt with the Jewish-Lithuanian past beyond the scope provided for in the curriculum. The prize is awarded annually and is supported by the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture.

literature

  • Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8: Riga, Warsaw, Vaivara, Kaunas, Płaszów, Kulmhof / Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 .
  • Michael Good: The search. Karl Plagge, the Wehrmacht officer who saved Jews. Translated from the English by Jörg Fiebelkorn. Beltz, Weinheim 2006, ISBN 3-407-85773-X .
  • Marianne Viefhaus: Civil courage in the time of the Holocaust. Karl Plagge from Darmstadt, a "Righteous Among the Nations". Ed. Darmstädter Geschichtswerkstatt and Magistrate of the City of Darmstadt, Darmstadt 2005, ISBN 3-00-016036-1 .
  • Marianne Viefhaus: For a community of the "lonely among their peoples". Major Karl Plagge and the Army Vehicle Park 562 in Vilnius. In: Wolfram Wette (ed.): Moral courage. Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-15852-4 , pp. 97-113.
  • Kim Priemel: On the Edge of the Holocaust - The Rescue of Jews by Wehrmacht Members in Vilnius. In: ZfG. 52, H. 11, 2004, pp. 1017-1034.
  • Wolfram Wette : Karl Plagge rescuer of Jews in uniform. A righteous among the peoples. In: IFDT. 2/2006.
  • Jörg Feuck: Karl Plagge - a "Righteous Among the Nations" "from Darmstadt. In: Informationsdienst Wissenschaft . April 6, 2005 (wreath laying on his grave by the city of Darmstadt).
  • Simon Malkès: The righteous man from the Wehrmacht. The survival of the Malkès family in Vilnius and the search for Karl Plagge. Metropol, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-185-8 .

Documentation

  • In the shadow of war. Stories of victims, perpetrators and rescuers. Documentation, 45 min., Production: ZDF-History , first broadcast: July 29, 2007
  • The good Nazi - Karl Plagge and the Jews of Vilnius. Documentation, 44 min., December 29, 2019, ZDF media library

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul-Hermann Gruner: A new name for the Frankenstein barracks ( Memento from August 2, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ). In: Echo Online . February 24, 2011.
  2. ↑ Karl Plagge on the Yad Vashem website .
  3. ^ Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der Briefadeligen houses, 1913, p.41
  4. ↑ Chief Medical Officer Dr. Plagge, grandfather of Major Plagge, established himself as a general practitioner in Ober-Ramstadt in March 1874 . In: Dieburger Kreisblatt 19/1874.
  5. ↑ NSDAP member from 1931 to 1939 according to isurvived.org .
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel: The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8. ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , pp. 227-228.
  7. ↑ Stephan Börnecke: A "Schindler" from Darmstadt. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . April 12, 2005.
  8. ↑ Sven Möller: A Righteous Among the Nations. In: PP Stadtkulturmagazin. April 2009.
  9. ↑ Work, learn, live, celebrate. TU opens Karl Plagge House on Alexanderstraße ( Memento from August 16, 2017 in the Internet Archive ). Technical University of Darmstadt, May 4, 2017.
  10. ^ Karl Plagge Award ( Memento from August 25, 2018 in the Internet Archive ). Karl Plagge Award.

Web links

Commons : Karl Plagge  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Plagge, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Plagge, Karl Eduard Adolf Theoderich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer in the Wehrmacht who saved 250 Jews
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH June 19, 1957
Place of death Darmstadt