In February 2006, the former Frankensteinkaserne, a Bundeswehr base in Pfungstadt, Germany, was renamed the Karl-Plagge-Kaserne. Serving initially in Poland after the German invasion, he witnessed atrocities that caused him to decide "to work against the Nazis". Imprisoned in a British prisoner-of-war camp from 1917 to 1920, he caught polio and became disabled in his left leg.

Mordecai Paldiel, the director of the committee, thanked Pearl Good for making the trip to Vilnius with her family and sparking the chain of events that uncovered Plagge's actions during the war. Rates highly amongst my reasonably extensive collection of ww2 literature which is mostly from the German perspective.

The book is written by a physician - William Good - whose parents - William and Pearl Gdud - were WWII holocaust survivors who fled to this country from Vilna in Lithuania.

Plagge exaggerated their importance to the war effort and managed to secure the release of all of them. Originally a Lutheran, Plagge lost his belief in God because of the atrocities that he witnessed during the Holocaust. On July 1st, 1944 Major Plagge entered the camp and as the prisoners gathered around him, he made an informal speech. As the story unfolds, we come to understand why Plagge, after the war, was still conflicted and filled with guilt. The camp was to be dissolved; accused of being soft on Jews, Plagge was forbidden to take them with his unit.After graduating from Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium, [2] a secondary school that focused on the classics, Plagge was drafted into the Imperial German Army. Instead of leaving the party, he attempted to effect change from within, accepting a position as a scientific lecturer and leader of a Nazi educational institute in Darmstadt. Good decides that the saintly Major Plagge must be commemorated, but is hindered by the fact, that none of the people who honor the Major's memory, even know his first name! Plagge was the "quasi-sovereign" of his unit, retaining his independence so long as the repair work got done, and worked to insulate his workers from the genocide perpetrated by the SS. Of a pre-war Jewish population in Vilnius, only 2,000 survived, of which the largest single group, were saved by Plagge.

Plagge argued with SS-Obersturmführer Rolf Neugebauer in an attempt to secure their release, but was unable to save them. Of 100,000 pre-war Jews in Vilnius, only 2,000 survived, of which the largest single group were saved by Plagge.

By the third application, I was able to come up with cases and specific instances in which he surely was risking his life. Apparently, approximately 40,000 members of the German army were executed during WWII for expressing similar sentiments!

Dr Good, a family physician who lives in Connecticut, began exploring the story of Plagge after visiting Subocz Street with his mother. After leaving Vilnius, Plagge led his unit westward and surrendered to the United States Army on 2 May 1945 without suffering a single casualty. Outside of the world of medicine and Holocaust history, he enjoys open water swimming, inline skating, vegetable gardening and geocaching. Following archaeological work done at the HKP 562 site in 2017, a documentary about Plagge and the camp, The Good Nazi, premiered in Vilnius the following year. He was cleared of war crimes after survivors testified at his trial, but he insisted on being classified as a "fellow traveller".

In 2005, after two unsuccessful petitions, the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem recognized him as one of the " Righteous Among the Nations". In 2005, following two unsuccessful petitions, the Holocaust Institution of Yad Vashem, recognized Karl Plagge, as a 'Righteous Among the Nations. A partially disabled veteran of World War I, Plagge studied engineering and joined the Nazi Party in 1931 in hopes of helping Germany rebuild from the economic collapse following the war. Plagge's godson Konrad Hesse will be at today's ceremony, along with the Good family and survivors of Subocz Street. In a letter shortly before his death in 1958, Plagge told a friend: "I never felt that this needed special courage.