Against the background of the Holocaust which has robbed so many of their faith here is a story to restore one's faith. "Perhaps in other places only a small amount of determination was lacking in order to prevent or decrease the atrocities. I never felt that this needed special courage. I...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Bibliographische Detailangaben

1. Verfasser:	Good, Michael (VerfasserIn)
Format:	Buch
Sprache:	English
Veröffentlicht:	New York Fordham Univ. Press 2005
Ausgabe:	1. ed.
Schlagworte:	Good, William Z Good, Pearl Plagge, Karl > 1897-1957 Good, Michael > Correspondence Juden Jews > Persecutions > Lithuania Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) > Personal narratives Righteous Gentiles in the Holocaust > Germany > Biography Gerechter unter den Völkern Rettung Deutschland Lithuania > Ethnic relations Vilnius Biografie
Online-Zugang:	Table of contents Inhaltsverzeichnis
Zusammenfassung:	Against the background of the Holocaust which has robbed so many of their faith here is a story to restore one's faith. "Perhaps in other places only a small amount of determination was lacking in order to prevent or decrease the atrocities. 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." Major Karl Plagge, from a letter written in 1956. 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. While all Righteous Gentiles share the stamp of conscience, 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 An engineer from Darmstadt, Karl Plagge first joined, then left, the Nazi Party. In Vilna, whose teeming ghetto held tens of thousands of Jews facing extermination, he found himself in charge of a work camp where military vehicles were repaired. Time after time, he saved Jews from prison and SS death squads, pulling whole families from the ghetto by issuing them work permits as indispensable laborers essential to the war effort. In this remarkable journey of discovery, Michael Good fills the missing pages in Karl Plagge's life. He also reminds us all of the many ways human beings can resist evil. I guess he was just a decent man, Pearl Good said of the man who saved her life, when he didn't have to. There are always some people who decide that the horror is not to be.Haunted by his mother's stories of a mysterious, benevolent 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 that had been untouched for more than fifty years, and translating newly discovered letters by Plagge, Good weaves an amazing tale. 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
Beschreibung:	Includes index.
Beschreibung:	238 S., [8] Bl. Ill.