Israeli Holocaust Museum Honors Nazi

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A German military officer who became known as the "Nazi who saved Jews" was honored Monday by Israel's Holocaust memorial for rescuing hundreds of Jews from death camps during World War II.

Maj. Karl Plagge was named "Righteous among the nations" in a posthumous ceremony at the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem. The honor is reserved for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, when Nazis killed 6 million Jews.

Plagge served as a Nazi officer in Lithuania from 1941-1944, where he was in charge of a factory that employed hundreds of Jews. According to Yad Vashem, Plagge employed unqualified people to save them from deportation, and warned his workers in June 1944 that German troops were approaching and they would be handed over to the Nazis. The warning enabled some 200 people to escape and survive.

"The experience of human-made horror is frequently accompanied by hope," said Johann-Dietrich Worner, president of the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. "Karl Plagge and similar examples prove that even in the darkness of misdeeds there exists the light of hope, of humanity in inhuman situations."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44069-2005Apr11.html