HKP 562 Forced Labor Camp

Drone obtained image of the former HKP Slave Labor Camp at 47-49 Subaciaus Street Vilnius

HKP 562 was the site of a Nazi forced labor camp for Jews in Vilnius, Lithuania, during the Holocaust.

Located at 47 & 49 Subačiaus Street, in apartment buildings originally built to house poor members of the Jewish community, the camp was used by the German army as a slave labor camp from September 1943 until July 1944. During that interval, the camp was officially owned and administered by the SS, but run on a day-to-day basis by a Wehrmacht engineering unit, Heereskraftfahrpark (HKP) 562 (Army Motor Vehicle Repair Park 562), stationed in Vilnius. HKP 562's commanding officer, Major Karl Plagge, was sympathetic to the plight of his Jewish workers. Plagge and some of his men made efforts to protect the Jews of the camp from the murderous intent of the SS. It was partially due to the covert resistance to the Nazi policy of genocide toward the Jews by members of the HKP 562 engineering unit that over 250 Jewish men, women and children survived the final liquidation of the camp in July 1944, the single largest group of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Vilnius.

After having hired endangered Jews in the Vilna Ghetto to work in his unit's workshops from 1941-1943, thereby protecting the workers and their families from the murderous Aktions of the SS, the HKP camp was hastily erected in September 1943 when Plagge learned of the impending liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto, where all inhabitants were to be killed regardless of their work papers. Plagge first traveled to Kaunas to the Wehrmacht headquarters and then to Riga to the SS administrative offices to argue on behalf of establishing a free standing camp outside of the Vilna Ghetto. He met considerable resistance, especially from the SS, regarding this plan and his insistence that the women and children not be separated from the men, which he said would negatively affect worker morale and productivity. He was ultimately successful and on the evening of September 16, 1943 drove a convoy of trucks into the Vilna Ghetto and loaded more than 1200 endangered Jewish ghetto residents onto his trucks and transported them to the relative safety of the newly erected HKP camp on Subocz (Subacious) street.^[1] One week later the Vilna Ghetto was liquidated by the SS and its 15,000 remaining residents were either killed in the nearby killing grounds at Ponerai or transported to concentration camps across Nazi occupied Europe. Documents found by the Jewish Museum in Vilnius show that the camp housed 1234 Jewish men, women and children.^[2] Initially, only men were employed in vehicle repair workshops in and around the camp; however, later after an attempt was made by the SS to transfer the women and children to the Kaunas concentration camp in January 1944, Major Plagge engaged two clothing manufacturers to set up clothing repair shops in the top two floors of one of the Apartment buildings and put the women and older children to work so that they would not appear to be idle to outside observers.^[3] Plagge also gave orders that "the civilians are to be treated with respect" and thus the camp was largely free of the abuse and brutality found in most slave labor camps in Nazi-occupied Poland.^[4] In spite of the generally benign attitude of the officers and men of the HKP unit, the SS did enter the camp on several occasions and committed atrocities. Most notable was the Kinder Aktion (an action against the camp's children) on 27 March 1944, during which the SS removed the vast majority of the 250 children living in the camp, who were then taken to their deaths.

In July and August 2017 a research team led by Richard Freund from the University of Hartford conducted archeological surveys of the former HKP camp site using non-invasive techniques such as Ground Penetrating Radar, Electric Resistance Tomography and drone obtained high resolution topographical maps. Their studies strongly supported the testimony which placed the location of a large mass grave from the final liquidation of the camp at the south end of the courtyard (under the current memorials as well as the parking area). They also confirmed the location of a trench near the outside wall of building number two (the western building) where witnesses reported that prisoners were shot and buried in a long trench along the side of the building. Additionally using drawings and written accounts of camp survivors the team was able to locate the "large maline" where 100 men, women and children succeeding in hiding during the final days of the camp and thus evaded the SS killing squads that descended on the camp on July 3–5, 1944.

* Karl Plagge (10 July 1897 – 19 June 1957) was a German engineer who rescued Jews during the Holocaust in Lithuania by issuing work permits to non-essential workers. A partially disabled veteran of World War I, Plagge studied engineering, and joined the Nazi Party in 1931 in

During World War II, he used his position as a staff officer in the German Army to employ and protect Jews in the Vilna Ghetto. At first, Plagge employed Jews who lived inside the ghetto, but when it was due to be terminated in September 1943, he set up the HKP 562 forced labor camp, where he saved many male Jews by issuing them official work permits on the false premise that their holders' skills were vital for the German war effort, and their wives and children by claiming they would work better if their families were alive. Although unable to stop the SS from liquidating the remaining prisoners in July 1944, Plagge managed to warn the prisoners in advance, allowing about 200 to hide from the SS and survive until the Red Army's liberation of Vilnius. Of 100,000 pre-war Jews in Vilnius, only 2,000 survived, of which the largest single group were saved by Plagge.