Overview

On April 11, 2005, in Jerusalem, Karl Plagge will be named a ""Righteous Among the Nations"" hero by the State of Israel. He joins Oskar Schindler and some 380 other similarly honored Germans who protected and saved Jews during the Holocaust. Karl Plagge's story is of a unique kind of courage - that of a German army officer who subverted the system of death to save the lives of some 250 Jews in Vilna, Lithuania. One of those he saved was Michael Good's mother. Haunted by his mother's stories of the mysterious officer who commanded her slave labor camp, Michael Good resolved to find out all he could about the enigmatic ""Major Plagge."" For five years, he wrote hundreds of letters and scoured the Internet to recover, in one hard-earned bit of evidence after another, information about the man whose moral choices saved hundreds of lives. This unforgettable book is the first portrait of a modest man who simply refused to play by the rules. Interviewing camp survivors, opening German files untouched for more than fifty years, and translating newly discovered letters, Good weaves an amazing tale. An engineer from Darmstadt, Plagge joined, and then left, the Nazi Party. In Vilna, in whose teeming ghetto tens of thousands of Jews faced extermination, he found himself in charge of a camp where military vehicles were repaired. Time after time, he saved Jews from prison, SS death squads, and the ghetto by issuing them work permits as ""indispensable"" laborers essential to the war effort. Karl Plagge never considered himself a hero, describing himself as a fellow traveler for not doing more to fight the regime. He said that he saved Jews - and others - because ""I thought it was my duty."" This book also reminds us of the many ways human beings can resist evil. ""There are always some people,"" Pearl Good said of the man who saved her life when he didn't have to, ""who decide that the horror is not to be.""

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In this gripping, emotional work, Good explores the life and legacy of a mysterious German officer who secretly defied his government to save Lithuanian Jews during the Holocaust.----Matthew Engelhardt, Middletown Press We need to listen to the story of Major Karl Plagge. . .who redeemed the name of human being in the time of darkness.----Rabbi Jack Riemer, South Florida Jewish Journal Inspiring . . . are the faithful efforts of the book's author, Dr. Michael Good, a Connecticut physician, whose mother Pearl and her family were mong Major Plagge's (more than 250) lucky saved souls, in tracing an unlikely Nazi's life and assuring the rightful recognition of a mensch who was too humble to acknowledge his own uniqueness.----Rabbi Israel Zoberman, Southeastern Virginia Jewish News This is an exceptional story of one man's bravery and compassion in a world where six million Jews were murdered. * -Booklist * A poignant and powerful story. . . . [Good's] portrait is vivid; his questions compelling. His answers only deepen the mystery of goodness and its meaning in our age. ----Michael Berenbaum, Director, the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, Los Angeles Reconstructs the actions of the German major who saved . . . Jewish men, women, and children, including Good's mother, by refusing to follow protocol and outwitting his superiors. . . .a true man of conscience and bravery. -Marek Breiger, L.A. Jewish Journal----Marek Breiger, L.A. Jewish Journal ...unprecedented insights into the burden of silent memories and a disastrous heritage of guilt. -- -Edith Wyschogrod This book is a personal quest, personal journey, and a personal history. * -Jewish Book World *

"""I never felt that this needed special courage. It required only the conviction and strength that anyone can draw from the depth of moral feelings that exists in all humans."" - Karl Plagge, in a letter written in 1956"""

An American doctor's quest for the unlikely Samaritan who saved his family during the Holocaust. He was better than Schindler. So remarked debut author Good's mother on returning, in 1999, to the dilapidated site of a onetime Nazi motor-repair facility-an HKP, in the German acronym-outside of Vilnius, Lithuania. There, more than a thousand Jewish slave laborers and their families, having been removed from a ghetto that would soon be liquidated, spent the last years of WWII servicing military vehicles bound for the Eastern Front. Conditions in the HKP and its satellite shops were relatively benign ; the prisoners, Good's grandfather recalled, slept in beds and were able to wash [them]selves and to cook, and if rations were sometimes short, no one starved. This comparative good treatment was all thanks to the offices of a Major Karl Plagge, who courted severe punishment himself for interfering with the murderous policies of the S.S. With the Germans' westward retreat in 1944, Plagge disappeared. Working from the testimonials of survivors, Good first sought to locate military records but was stymied because access to such documents was restricted. Having recruited the help of German researchers, however, he was finally able to locate transcripts of Plagge's postwar denazification trial, in which Plagge related how he attempted to balance being a good and obedient soldier with being a quiet agent of resistance: I took the decision, he said, always to act against Nazi rules and to also give my subordinates the order to act in a very humane manner toward the civilian population -including Jews. Armed with this evidence, Good petitioned Israel's Yad Vashem commission to grant Plagge the honorary designation of righteous among nations, indicating a gentile who had helped Jews at personal risk. Good's request was finally granted in 2002-but not without another trying period of argumentation and presentation of evidence to prove that Plagge truly deserved such recognition. A rewarding tale of redemption in the face of horror, of wide interest. (Kirkus Reviews)

I never felt that this needed special courage. It required only the conviction and strength that anyone can draw from the depth of moral feelings that exists in all humans. - Karl Plagge, in a letter written in 1956

Author Information

Michael Good's father, William Good, escaped the Nazis by hiding in forests around Vilna. Pearl Good, her parents, and her cousins survived the camp run by Karl Plagge. Michael Good is a physician in Durham, Connecticut.

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