Everyone is born different, even if it is the same race, there is a game of good and evil. During the Second World War, there were too many such cases, such as the Germanic peoples who had demons like Hitler, but there were also heroes like Schindler who worked in their own way to save more victims.
During World War II, Japan and Germany were allies, so when Japan invaded China, the German Nazi Party would also send people to China to communicate with Japan, and John Rabe was one of the Germans who had been sent to China. In fact, in 1937, the Japanese army invaded China in an all-round way, and it was not John's first visit to China.
Born in November 1882, he is a native of Hamburg, Germany. John suffered a lot when he was young, his father died of illness when he was 4 years old, and when he reached junior high school, because the family's economic conditions could not support his study expenses, John had to drop out of school early to work as a business partner.
John had been to African colonies in his early years and worked for a British company. During this period, he heard a lot of anecdotes about China and became yearning for Chinese culture. In 1908, when John, who had just turned 20, came to Beijing, the capital of the Qing Dynasty, he did not prejudice the poor and backward Qing Dynasty like some self-proclaimed noble foreigners, but lived directly in Beijing.
Perhaps because he suffered hardships as a child, John became more aware and considerate of the lives of poor people, and he asked his fiancée, Dora Rabe, to come to China and marry and live with him in Beijing. John took a large number of photographs about Beijing, and also drew a large number of pictures, recording his observations in China every day in his diary.
These manuscripts of John are now important sources and evidence for the study of history. In 1911, when John returned to China briefly because of the change in the situation in Germany, he was already a member of the Nazi Party when he returned to China again. In 1931, John was assigned to Nanjing and had a high title.
John did not know the situation of the Jews in Germany, but he saw everything that Chinese was experiencing, so he began to write The Diary of Rabe. During his tenure, he used his position to establish a school in Nanjing and actively improved the living environment of the people of Nanjing.
Because of this, John was regarded as an outlier by his party, and he was under a lot of pressure. In 1937, the Japanese army launched a full-scale invasion of China and invaded Nanjing in November of the same year. John fought with the Japanese army for a long time, and finally failed to stop the Japanese invasion of China. It was also then that John had another identity – chairman of the Nanjing International Safety Zone.
He used his residence as one of the shelters, and together with other international friends, he isolated a place of less than 4 square kilometers and sheltered 250,000 Nanjing citizens. After the Nanjing Massacre in December 1937, the Chinese massacred by the Japanese army were conservatively estimated to be 340,000. But the 250,000 Chinese safe zone established by John survived the disaster.
In 1938, John's affairs were known to his party, and the Germans were forced to force him to return to China under pressure. On New Year's Day 1938, before John's departure, all the people in the safe zone bowed in thanks and gave him a large red silk cloth with 10 big words made by everyone together- "You are a living bodhisattva for hundreds of thousands of people."
In February 1938, after John returned to China, he held report meetings in China and constantly wrote to the authorities to disclose the Nanjing Massacre. As a result, John was arrested and imprisoned, and some valuable video materials were confiscated. In 1946, John went to court for his Nazi status and was released because his good deeds in Nanjing were confirmed.
But John's life was still suppressed, and his family was so poor that the children were almost starving to death. When the citizens of Nanjing heard the news, they actually raised 100 million yuan to fund the "living bodhisattva" for everyone within a few days, knowing that it was only 1948. But John was unable to survive, and on January 5, 1950, he died of a stroke.
His grandson preserved his diaries and materials, especially the Rabe Diary, which eventually became ironclad evidence of the crimes committed by the Japanese army in China. In 1997, with the joint efforts of the relevant departments and the people of Nanjing, John Rabe's tombstone was welcomed from Berlin, Germany to Nanjing, and a sculpture was built for John to commemorate the hero forever.
Fast forward to 2020, and because of the epidemic, many people around the world are in trouble. China received a letter of help from Germany signed Dr. Thomas Rabe, the grandson of John Rabe. After learning about the current situation in Germany through him, China quickly collected medicines and supplies to help Germany.
According to the blessings of China, if John Rabe had a spirit in heaven, he would have been very pleased. Today, his sculptures and flowers in front of his tombstones are continuous, and Sun Tzu is also a representative of the friendly exchanges between China and Germany, and may the goodwill of the world be preserved forever.