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Book Reviews
Dr. Gideon Greif
Our book review column focuses on the main topic for this issue: the Righteous Among the Nations. We wish you an enlightening read.
Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind The List
This book describes Schindler’s actions as a rescuer of Jews in Cracow and Brinnlitz, and Schindler’s life before the Second World War.
In 1938, Schindler was stationed in Czechoslovakia as an agent for the German military intelligence gathering information prior to the planned German invasion. Schindler was arrested by the Czech counter-intelligence unit, imprisoned and tortured. He was subsequently released following the Munich Conference, which allowed Germany to annex areas of Czechoslovakia, and thus he was spared a lengthy prison term. He apparently resumed his activity in military intelligence, which would later serve him in good stead. After the German invasion in Poland, Schindler would use his connection with key officials in the Nazi regime to rescue Jews, though by that time he had ceased any government-related work and had become a businessman.
In this work, Crowe explores Schindler’s failures as a businessman after the war as well as his various relationships with women. Crowe asserts that Schindler was and remains an enigma, and thus does not differ from the conclusion reached by those Schindler had rescued. The author reaches the conclusion that despite Schindler’s problematic past, he truly had changed, and thus became one of the greatest rescuer of Jews. His actions, according to Crowe, more than made up for his past. In any case, the rescue of some 1,200 Jews under the watchful eyes of some of the most murderous Nazis in Poland, remains to his credit.
The author is a professor of history at Columbia University and a member of the Education Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind The List, David M. Crowe (Cambridge: Westview Press, 2004), 766 pp.
The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews
This is the story of a Major in the German army, who managed a workshop repairing military vehicles located in Vilna (today: Vilnius, Lithuania). Hundreds of Jews from the ghetto were employed in this workshop, thus saving them from deportation. Alongside skilled vehicle repairmen were many who were not, yet they were still allowed to reside in special barracks outside the ghetto, together with their families. Plagge managed to prevent their deportation almost to the end of the German occupation of Vilna. Upon parting from his workshop workers, he warned them to expect hardship under the SS rule. In effect, Plagge hinted that they would be better off escaping and many Jews attempted to escape. Some of them managed to reach the forests safely, whereas others had been shot and killed.
After the war, Plagge was de-Nazified, being a member of the Nazi Party. Many of the Jews who testified in his favor later cleared him of this charge. Plagge died in the 1970s.
Plagge’s story remained virtually unknown and has only come to light through the work of Dr. Good, a Jewish-American doctor. Since Good’s mother had been among those saved through Plagge’s workshop, he decided to research Plagge’s story, and over time discovered more survivors in Israel and France. Plagge was recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations in 2005.
Of particular interest in this book is the author’s personal journey who discovered his mother’s story which led him to eventually conduct research about Plagge.
The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi who Saved Jews, Michael Good (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005).
A Safe House: Holland 1940-1945
The writer is an author and a poet. She is the daughter of Righteous Among the Nations Wilhemina Wolsak-Mendelson, and she herself has been recognized as one. In the book she describes her mother’s and brother’s activity in rescuing Dutch Jews, as well as that of her own. Her mother married one of the Jews she saved, named Mendelson. The book combines autobiographical text and Jacobs’ own skillfully written poems.
A Safe House: Holland 1940-1945, Maria Jacobs (Ontario: Seraphim Edition, 2005).
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