It sounds like an oxymoron, right? How could anything described as “Nazi” be good? 

Come hear the story of Major Karl Plagge, the only Nazi to have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. Plagge was a Nazi officer whose actions, like those of Oskar Schindler, saved hundreds of Jews under his authority. As commandant of a forced labor camp in Vilna, Lithuania, he worked to shelter the laborers under his command, as well their families. Higher ups were suspicious of his activities, but many of his workers were saved from an SS raid by hiding in areas they had dug under his watch. Sadly, those who could not hide were murdered and buried in a mass grave. That is where the story gets even more interesting.

The Good Nazi tells Plagge’s story, as well as that of the modern day scientists who worked to verify that mass grave before the Lithuanian government knocked down the camp buildings (still standing) to build apartments on top of it. In the film, Dr. Richard Freund, the lead forensic archeologist, goes back to the “scene of the crime,” with a team including a child survivor of the raid, and an American physician whose mother was saved by Plagge, to tell the story of what happened at the little-known camp known as HKP.

After the one hour film, hear from Dr. Freund of Christopher Newport University, who has led excavations at other Holocaust sites like Sobibor and the Great Synagogue in Vilna, about the methods he and his team, including many non-Jewish college students, used to get to the truth of this little known story of the Holocaust. 

In-person and virtual tickets available.

The $10 registration fee goes towards the Bertram and Aaron Professorship in Jewish Studies at CNU, allowing Dr. Freund to continue his groundbreaking research.