Friends who have seen "Schindler's List" should know that german businessman Oscar Schindler, although a member of the Nazi Party, saved the lives of more than 1,100 Jews in his capacity in the Holocaust. In China, there is also such a German Nazi party member, in the Nanjing Massacre, with his own efforts, successfully saved the lives of 250,000 people, he is known as "China's Schindler" John Rabe.
Although he was a Nazi, he came to China in his early years and witnessed the tragic situation in Nanjing after the war
Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1882, John Rabe arrived in China in August 1908 after his father's early death, interrupted his studies to make a living, and married his wife, Dora, in Beijing in October 1910. Although a Native of Germany, Rabe was extremely fond of Chinese culture and had collected a large collection of photographs and paintings about Beijing.
In 1911, Mr. Rabe was admitted to the German Siemens branch in Suzi Hutong, Dongcheng, Beijing, as an accountant and clerk, and after that, in addition to returning to China briefly, he lived in China for a long time, and successively traveled to Beijing, Tianjin, Shenyang and other places because of his work. As Mr. Rabe himself said, "The best youth of my life was spent happily in this country (China), where my children and grandchildren were born", so although he was a foreigner, he also loved the land.
In November 1931, Mr. Raabe began to serve as deputy director of the Nanjing branch of the German Nazi Party, and because of the good relations between the German Nazi Party and the National Government at that time, Mr. Raabe was able to work and live in Nanjing, and it was during this period that he began to write the "Raabe Diary" and in 1934 took the initiative to build a German school near his residence in Nanjing.
In 1937, japan began to attack Shanghai, and at the time of the all-out war between China and Japan, foreigners fled China, while Mr. Rabe left his wife and children in Beijing and returned to Nanjing himself. After that, although the Germans urged him to leave China, he only sent his wife and children back to Germany, while he himself remained in Nanjing.
After the Japanese captured Shanghai, they attacked Nanjing instead, and on December 13, 1937, they captured the city of Nanjing, after which the Japanese army began to commit various unforgivable crimes in Nanjing. As a German Nazi, Rabe survived the disaster, but he saw firsthand the crimes committed by the Japanese army.
In his diary, Rabe detailed the crimes committed by the Japanese army, such as "On December 14, driving through the city, every 1200 meters passed, the corpses of civilians were rolled over. I have checked that the bullets were shot from behind, and that the people should have been killed from behind as they fled."
Another example is "On December 16, I drove to Shimonoseki to survey the power plant, and there were corpses on Zhongshan North Road... The corpses in front of the city gate were piled up like hills... Murder was killing everywhere, and machine guns were firing non-stop."
Another example is "On December 22, we found that many civilians were shot in ponds, and in one of the ponds 30 bodies were found, most of them with their hands and feet tied, and some with stones tied to their necks." ”
Rabe with colleagues in Nanjing
After discovering a series of tragedies, Mr. Rabe wrote many letters of protest to the Commanders and Embassies of the Japanese Army, detailing the crimes committed by the Japanese army, but most of these letters were buried in the sea. In desperation, Rabe, while angrily recording the crimes of the Japanese army in his diary, began to personally participate in the action to save the people.
In order to avoid harm to the people, he turned his yard into a shelter
Seeing that his protests had no effect, Rabe could only choose to use his only power to help more innocent people. At first, he simply opened his yard and hid his neighbors in his compound at No. 1 Xiaofanqiao, Guangzhou Road.
With the identity of the German Nazi Party, the Japanese army did not dare to invade Rabe's yard in any way, so the news that "hiding in Rabe's house will be fine" began to spread rapidly. Immediately afterward, many people who heard the wind and had nowhere to escape began to flock to Rabe's home, and soon Rabe's modest residence poured in more than 600 refugees.
On Christmas Day 1938, Rabe wrote in his diary, "I got an unexpectedly good Christmas gift, the lives of more than 600 people." And Rabe not only provided these refugees with a rare shelter for survival, but he also generously afforded the food and clothing of these people, and it can be said that Rabe's family is the last straw for these people.
However, when there were fewer people in the camp, the Japanese army would turn a blind eye, but as Rabe took in more and more people, his identity as a German Nazi party could no longer stop the greedy beastliness of the Japanese army.
According to the survivor Tang Ying's account, one night, after learning that Rabe was out, three Japanese soldiers climbed over the wall and entered Rabe's home, intending to mutilate the people hiding in Rabe's home. When the Japanese soldiers were escorting a woman to climb over the courtyard wall, rabe returned home, and when he saw the situation, he angrily asked the Japanese soldiers to get out of his home, the Japanese soldiers originally wanted to go out of the gate, but Rabe pulled out his pistol and asked them to return the same way, and in desperation, the three Japanese soldiers had to obediently flip out of the wall.
In order to prevent a recurrence of similar incidents, Rabe selected some able men from among the refugees and asked them to form patrols in the courtyard, blowing the whistle as soon as the Japanese soldiers were found, and then Mr. Raabe would arrive and drive away the Japanese soldiers who had broken into the house.
To ensure the safety of the refugees, Mr. Raabe also made a huge Nazi Party flag out of his family's bed sheets and hung it in the courtyard to ensure that Japanese soldiers did not easily invade the area. However, as the number of refugees poured in, Rabe had to find other ways to save more people.
The establishment of a safe zone saved 250,000 people, but after returning home, they died of suspicion and worry
In order to save more people, Mr. Rabe contacted other foreign envoys and priests who were still in Nanjing at the time to jointly form a four-square-kilometer international security zone and was elected as the chairman of the Nanjing International Safety Zone. After that, Mr. Rabe negotiated with the Japanese army to strictly prohibit any Japanese troops from breaking into the safe zone to arrest and kill people, and the Japanese army finally promised that as long as there were no Chinese troops in the safe zone, they would not take the initiative to attack.
Raabe with colleagues in the safety zone
After the establishment of the security zone, 250,000 people have poured into this rare shelter, only by virtue of Rabe's personal ability, naturally can not shelter so many people, the reason why the Japanese army did not dare to attack the safe zone, more is jealous of Rabe's Nazi Party identity.
On January 16, 1938, Rabe attended a banquet at the Japanese Embassy, and in response to his act of protecting the Chinese, Rabe explained, "Since the vast majority of the members of our committee had previously been engaged in missionary work here, they regarded from the beginning the responsibility of their Chinese friends who did not leave their country during the war as their Christians... That is what motivates us, the foreigners, to insist on staying here, trying to help the suffering Chinese".
Because Rabe constantly prevented and recorded the atrocities committed by the Japanese army in Nanjing, the Japanese army could not do anything about it. In the end, the Japanese side protested to Germany, and Germany finally decided to recall Raabe back to China in order to maintain German-Japanese relations.
In February 1938, Raabe was forced to embark on his way back to Germany. On the occasion of parting, the people in the security zone found a red cloth, wrote on it, "You are a living bodhisattva of hundreds of thousands of people", and gave it to Rabe, who was about to leave. At the same time, the people lined up and bowed three times to Mr. Rabe as a sign of thanks.
After returning to Germany, Rabe did not forget the suffering people of Nanjing, and he constantly publicized the crimes of the Japanese army to the outside world, hoping to use international public opinion to put pressure on the Japanese army and force the Japanese army to give up the cruelty to the people. However, Rabe's actions soon attracted the attention of the German government.
In order to stop Rabe's propaganda, the Gestapo arrested him for a time, and although he was released after a few hours of interrogation, he took away the film that Raabe had kept by John Maggie about the atrocities of the Japanese army, as well as six of his personal diaries, and ordered him not to make further reports, not to publish books, and not to publicize Japanese atrocities.
After germany's defeat, Raabe was arrested by the Soviet Union and the British for his nazi membership. It was not until June 1946, after an investigation proved that he had committed no mistakes, that he was de-Nazismized and released by the Allies, but Rabe, who was released from prison, was already penniless and suffering from severe diabetes, which made his life extremely poor.
By 1948, Rabe's life was so difficult that he could only cook soup for his children, adults nibbled on dry bread, and the whole family was on the verge of starvation. After the news returned to China, Nanjing Shimin raised 100 million yuan, which was later exchanged for 2,000 US dollars by the Nationalist government at the market price and transferred to Germany to help Rabe.
Nanjing donated money to rebuild the Rabe cemetery in Berlin
On January 5, 1950, Rabe died of a stroke at the age of 68, and his diary material was kept by his grandson, and the Rabe Diary is now one of the most direct and powerful evidence to expose the crimes in Nanjing, Japan.
In 1996, Rabe's descendants were unable to afford the management of his cemetery and his tombstone was removed. After learning the news in China, after active consultation, his tombstone was finally moved to the Nanjing Memorial Hall in 1997, allowing him to return to his second hometown where he once lived and fought in another way.