More WW2 for the day

War History Online has an article about yet another 'good' German:

During World War Two, Wilhelm “Wilm” Hosenfeld (photo, above, right) saved numerous Poles and at least two Jews from the Holocaust. One of these Jews was Wladyslaw Szpilman (photo, above, left), whose story was the basis of Roman Polanski’s film, The Pianist.
Wilm Hosenfeld was born into the family of a pious Roman Catholic schoolmaster living near Fulda, Germany. During World War One, he saw active service and, after being severely wounded in 1917, he received the Iron Cross Second Class. He then retired from the army and became a teacher and married a pacifist woman, Annemarie.
Hosenfeld joined the Nazi party in 1935 and was drafted into the Wehrmacht in August of 1939. He was stationed in Poland from mid-September of 1939 until his capture by the Soviet Army on 17 January 1945.
His first destination was Pabianice, where he was involved in the building and running of a POW camp. Next, he was stationed in Węgrów in December of 1939, where he remained until his battalion was moved another thirty kilometers away to Jadów at the end of May of 1940. He was finally transferred to Warsaw, Poland in July of 1940, where he spent the rest of the war, for the most part attached to Wach-Bataillon (guards battalion) 660, part of the Wach-Regiment Warschau, in which he served as a staff officer and as the battalion sports officer.
As time passed, Hosenfeld grew disillusioned with the party and its policies, especially as he saw how Poles and Jews were treated. He and several fellow German Army officers felt sympathy for the people of occupied Poland. Ashamed of what some of their countrymen were doing, they offered help to those they could whenever possible.
His actions on behalf of Poles began as early as autumn of 1939 when, against regulations, he allowed Polish POWs access to their families, and even pushed successfully for the early release of at least one. He made an effort to learn the Polish language, and attended Holy Mass in Polish churches, a practice forbidden by Nazi rules.
The first Jew that Hosenfeld is known to have helped was Leon Warm, who escaped from a train headed for the death camp, Treblinka, during the 1942 deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto. Wilm provided him with a false identity and a job.
During his time in Warsaw, Wilmn Hosenfeld used his position to give refuge to people, regardless of their background, who were in danger of persecution or arrest by the Gestapo. Sometimes he gave them the papers they needed and jobs at the sports stadium that was under his oversight.
In November of 1944, months after the Warsaw uprising, Hosenfeld met the Jewish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman, who had been hiding in an abandoned building since August of 1944.  He discovered the emaciated Szpilman and, when he found out that he was a pianist, asked him to play something on the piano on the ground floor. Szpilman played Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor.
Hosenfeld then showed Szpilman a better place to hide, and brought him bread and jam on numerous occasions. He also offered Szpilman one of his coats to keep warm in the freezing temperatures; Szpilman did not know Hosenfeld's name until 1951.
Hosenfeld was captured by the Soviets at Błonie, a small Polish city about thirty kilometers west of Warsaw, along with the men of a Wehrmacht company he was leading. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 1950 on charges that he interrogated prisoners during the Warsaw Uprising and sent them to detention. The Soviets ignored his statements that he had helped Jews and Poles and was only responsible for the sports school and training of German soldiers.
Warm and Szpilman both petitioned the Soviets for Hosenfeld’s release. The Soviets refused to consider the petitions, believing that Hosenfeld had been involved in war crimes. In 1952, Hosenfeld died after a series of strokes in a Soviet prison.
In November of 2008, Hosenfeld was honored by Yad Vashem with the Righteous Among the Nations distinction, ten years after Szpilman had applied for the recognition. The the awards commission wanted first to confirm there was no truth to the Soviet charges brought against him.
His actions to save Szpilman were immortalized in The Pianist, a 2002 historical drama based on the autobiographical book The Pianist, the World War Two memoir by Władysław Szpilman. In the movie, Hosenfeld is played by Thomas Kretschmann.

Rico says truth is stranger than any fiction...