A documentary film that includes the work of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire faculty and student researchers at the site of a World War II Nazi labor camp will be shown at 4 p.m. on Friday (Sept. 28) in the Woodland Theater of UW-Eau Claire’s Davies Center.
The screening of “The Good Nazi,” part of UW-EC’s Earth Science Seminar series, is free and open to the public. The 50-minute film chronicles the July, 2017 work of a multi-national research team at the site of HKP 562, a Nazi labor camp in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Harry Jol, UW-EC geography professor, and UW-EC students were part of the research team. They used ground-penetrating radar to search for killing trenches, mass graves and malinas (hiding places in the Jewish living quarters).
The research team included members from the United States, Canada, Israel and Lithuania.
The commanding officer of HKP 562, Major Karl Plagge, led efforts to protect the camp’s Jewish workers from the Nazi SS. His efforts resulted in the survival of more than 250 Jewish men, women and children at the camp — the single largest group of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Vilnius.
The documentary includes video testimonies from HKP 562 survivors who helped direct the work of the research team, as well as from a Plagge family member. This will be its first showing in Wisconsin.
The Hebrew version of the film premiered in April in Israel and the English version was first shown in Vilnius in July. The film will be featured on the PBS science series “NOVA” in next spring.
Note: the home page photo shows 2018 UW-EC geology graduate Richard Mataitis using ground-penetrating radar at the site of HKP 562, a Nazi labor camp in Vilnius, Lithuania. He was part of the team that helped conduct research at the labor camp site in July, 2017. The building at the right housed Jewish workers at HKP 562 and the monument in the foreground is a memorial to those killed at HKP 562. (The photo was provided by UW-EC)