Film Screening & Conversation: The Good Nazi

Date: Thursday, May 30, 2019


Where: Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 [view map]
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Please note that this event is SOLD OUT!

In 1943, as the Vilna Ghetto is about to be liquidated, Nazi officer Major Karl Plagge makes a decision to risk his own life and save the lives of Vilna's Jews. For decades, Plagge's incredible heroism was relatively unknown. But when Dr. Michael Good takes a trip to Vilna to see the place where his mother was saved, the story of the "Schindler of Lithuania" comes to light. Plagge's bravery saved the lives of hundreds of Jews, including local artist Samuel Bak. 

Film will be followed by conversation with Dr. Michael Good and HKP survivor artist Samuel Bak. 

Samuel Bak is a Polish-born artist whose paintings meld Socialist Realism, Surrealism, and Cubism. His identity as a Jewish Holocaust survivor, inform the ways in which he depicts images of war and contemporary culture. Rife with symbolism, Bak’s work functions as a form of catharsis, as much for himself as the viewer. His self-professed admiration for artists like Albrecht Dürer and Michelangelo is evident both in his subject matter and technique. Born on August 12, 1933 in Vilnius, Lithuania (formerly Wilno, Poland) Bak's early childhood is marked by Soviet, then Nazi, occupation of his hometown. His father and extended family were killed during the Holocaust, while he and his mother survived. Bak studied painting in Munich just before emigrating to Israel in 1948. In Israel, he studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. Between the 1960s and 1990s, Bak studied and lived in Paris, New York, and Lausanne. The artist’s works have been exhibited at the Tel Aviv Museum, the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, and the Bezalel Museum in Jerusalem. He currently lives and works in Boston, MA.


Michael Good a family physician from Connecticut became interested in Holocaust history in 1999 during a family trip to Vilnius, Lithuania.  During this journey, his mother told him of the mysterious German army officer, a certain Major Plagge, who commanded her slave labor camp and who  she claimed had saved her, her parents and over 250  Jewish workers from the murderous intent of the Nazis. She did not know who he was or what had become of the German officer, but she insisted that “Plagge saved us all”. Following this trip, Good set out to find this enigmatic officer, trying to understand who Major Plagge was and why a German officer would have acted so benevolently at a time when his countrymen were committing atrocities on a previously unthinkable scale. In his book,”The Search for Major Plagge" Dr. Good shares his parents’ stories of survival and  describes his search for the man who saved his mother’s life. During this journey of exploration  he built a team of camp survivors and researchers from Canada, France, Israel, and Germany to answer the questions that had haunted camp survivors and their descendants for decades. Good gradually reveals the story of a remarkable man of conscience, who transformed from an early supporter of the Nazi party into a covert rescuer of persecuted Jews.