but his efforts cannot save very many people and often appear useless. Like Plagge, Rieux does not see himself as a hero. Originally a Lutheran, Plagge lost his belief in God because of the atrocities that he witnessed during the Holocaust. Assessment and legacy In 1999, HKP 562 survivor Pearl Good traveled to Vilnius with her family. Good's son, Michael, decided to investigate the story of Plagge, but he had trouble locating him because survivors knew him only as "Major Plagge" and did not know his full name or place of birth. After fourteen months, Good was able to find Plagge's Wehrmacht personnel file. He eventually published the results of his research in 2005 as The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews. Good formed an organization of researchers and friends that he called the "Plagge Group" and, along with HKP survivors, petitioned Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the Holocaust, to have Plagge recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations". Their first petition, in 2002, was rejected. They applied again the next year and received a reply stating that "we fail to understand what possible risks he had to fear from his superiors". In Yad Vashem's view, Plagge's efforts to save Jewish workers and treat them humanely were probably related to serving the German war effort. The Plagge Group disagreed, pointing out that Wehrmacht soldiers associating with Jews were threatened with being treated as Jews; indeed, Wehrmacht Sergeant Anton Schmid had been executed in 1942 for helping Jews in the Vilna Ghetto. In 2004, the letter that Plagge had written in 1956 to Strauss was discovered. Letters between Plagge and SS-Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Göcke, which persuaded the latter to spare the female forced laborers in the HKP 562 camp, were uncovered that same year. The Yad Vashem committee voted on 22 July 2004 to recognize Plagge as Righteous Among the Nations. The ceremony, held in Jerusalem on 11 April 2005, was attended by many survivors, Konrad Hesse, and a few members of Plagge's extended family. Mordecai Paldiel, the director of the committee, thanked Pearl Good for making the trip to Vilnius with her family and sparking the chain of events that uncovered Plagge's actions during the war. Because Plagge had no descendants, the president of the Technische Universität Darmstadt accepted the award on his behalf. In February 2006, the former Frankensteinkaserne, a Bundeswehr base in Pfungstadt, Germany, was renamed