Karl Plagge (pronounced [kaʁl ˈplaɡə] ⓘ; 10 July 1897 – 19 June 1957) was a German Army officer who rescued Jews during the Holocaust in Lithuania by issuing work permits to non-essential workers.

During World War II, he used his position as a staff officer in the German Army to employ and protect Jews in the Vilna Ghetto.

At first, Plagge employed Jews who lived inside the ghetto, but when the ghetto was slated for liquidation in September 1943, he set up the HKP 562 forced labor camp, where he saved many male Jews by issuing them official work permits on the false premise that their holders' skills were vital for the German war effort, and also made efforts to save the worker's wives and children by claiming they would work better if their families were alive.

Plagge was tried before an Allied denazification court in 1947, which accepted his plea to be classified as a "fellow traveler" of the Nazi Party, whose rescue activities were undertaken for humanitarian reasons rather than overt opposition to Nazism.

According to historian Kim Priemel, the success of Plagge's rescue efforts was due to working within the system to save Jews, a position that required him to enter a "grey zone" of moral compromise.

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.

[6] In 1934, Plagge began to work at Hessenwerks, an engineering company run by Kurt Hesse, whose wife Erica was half-Jewish.

[9] Plagge was drafted into the Wehrmacht (German Army) as a captain in the reserve at the beginning of World War II,[4] and stopped paying Nazi Party membership fees at the same time.

[4][11] Plagge gave work certificates to Jewish men, certifying them as essential and skilled workers regardless of their actual backgrounds.

Plagge, who had been promoted to major, secured permission from the SS to establish a Juden-KZ for HKP 562 on Subocz Street on the outskirts of Vilnius.

Initially able to secure their release, Plagge left the Jews with subordinates, but Kittel's superior officer, SS-Obersturmführer Rolf Neugebauer, ordered them to be deported anyway.

[17][18] On 16 September 1943, Plagge transported over 1,000 of his Jewish workers and their families from the Vilna Ghetto to the newly built HKP camp at 37 Subocz Street, where they remained in relative safety.

The camp, which consisted of two multistory tenements originally constructed to house Jews on welfare, was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by Lithuanian collaborators and SS men.

[9][20] On certain occasions, Plagge's policy of non-confrontation with the SS put him "in a catch-22 situation with serious moral implications", according to historian Kim Priemel.

In November 1943, a Jewish prisoner named David Zalkind, his wife and child attempted to escape from the camp and were caught by the Gestapo.

They were executed in the camp courtyard in front of the other prisoners; the SS officer who ordered the killing reported that it was done "in accord with the Park-leader Major Plagge".

On 1 July, Plagge made an informal speech to the Jewish prisoners in the presence of SS Oberscharführer Richter: The front line is moving west and HKP's assignment is to always be a certain number of miles behind the front line... As a result, you the Jews, and the workers will also be moved... since all of you are highly specialized and experienced workers in an area of great importance to the German Army, you will be reassigned to an HKP unit... You will be escorted during this evacuation by the SS which, as you know, is an organization devoted to the protection of refugees.

[33] Because he had joined the Nazi Party so early and commanded a labor camp where many prisoners were murdered, he was tried in 1947 as part of the postwar denazification process; he hired a lawyer to defend him.

[37] After the trial, Plagge lived the final decade of his life quietly and died of a heart attack in Darmstadt on 19 June 1957.

[24] In a letter to a Jewish lawyer, R. Strauss, dated 26 April 1956, Plagge compared himself to Dr. Rieux, a character in Albert Camus's novel The Plague.

Letters between Plagge and SS-Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Göcke, which persuaded the latter to spare the female forced laborers in the HKP 562 camp, were uncovered that same year.

[45] The ceremony, held in Jerusalem on 11 April 2005, was attended by many survivors, Konrad Hesse, and a few members of Plagge's extended family.

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.

[2][38] 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.

However, the soldiers under his command and other Wehrmacht officials, including Hans Christian Hingst, the civilian administrator of German-occupied Vilnius, were aware of Plagge's rescue activities and did not denounce him.

[49] The historian Kim Priemel, examining Wehrmacht rescuers in Vilnius, concludes that Plagge "remained within a 'grey zone' of moral compromise, which, however, was vital to the success of [his] rescue efforts".