John Rabe

Born in Hamburg on 23 November 1882, Rabe pursued a career in business and went to Africa for several years. In 1908 he left for China, and between 1910 and 1938, he worked for the Siemens AG China Corporation in Mukden, Peking, Tientsin, Shanghai and later Nanking.[1] Rabe suffered from diabetes by the time he was working in Nanking, which required him to have his regular dose of insulin.[2] At the time of the Japanese attack on Nanking, Rabe was a staunch Nazi and the party's local head, as a Deputy Group Leader in the Nazi Party.[3]

The former residence of John Rabe in Nanking, located in the Nanking Safety Zone during Nanking Massacre.

Many Westerners were living in the Chinese capital city of the time as Nanking was, until December 1937, conducting trade or on missionary trips. As the Japanese army approached Nanking and initiated bombing raids on the city, all but 22 foreigners fled the city, with 15 American and European missionaries and businessmen forming part of the remaining group.[4] On 22 November 1937, as the Japanese Army advanced on Nanking, Rabe, along with other foreign nationals, organized the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone and created the Nanking Safety Zone to provide Chinese refugees with food and shelter from the impending Japanese slaughter. He explained his reasons thus: "…there is a question of morality here… I cannot bring myself for now to betray the trust these people have put in me, and it is touching to see how they believe in me."[5] The zones were located in all of the foreign embassies and at Nanking University.

The International Committee was inspired by the establishment in November of a neutral zone in Shanghai, which protected about 450,000 civilians.[3]

Rabe was elected as its leader, in part because of his status as a member of the Nazi party and the existence of the German–Japanese bilateral Anti-Comintern Pact. This committee established the Nanking Safety Zone in the western quarter of the city. The Japanese government had agreed not to attack parts of the city that did not contain Chinese military forces, and the members of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone attempted to persuade the Chinese government to move all their troops out of the area. They were partly successful.

On 1 December 1937, Nanking Mayor Ma Chao-chun ordered all Chinese citizens remaining in Nanking to move into the Safety Zone and then fled the city. By the fall of Nanking on 13 December 1937, 500,000 non-combatants remained in the city.[3]

Rabe also opened up his properties to help 650 more refugees.

According to Rabe, the Nanking Massacre resulted in the deaths of 50,000 to 60,000 civilians. Rabe and his zone administrators tried frantically to stop the atrocities. Modern estimates vary, but some put the number of murdered civilians as high as 300,000.[6][7] Rabe's attempts to appeal to the Japanese by using his Nazi Party membership credentials only delayed them; but that delay allowed hundreds of thousands of refugees to escape. The documentary Nanking credited him for saving the lives of 250,000 Chinese civilians. Other sources suggest that Rabe rescued between 200,000 and 250,000 Chinese people.[8] In his diary, Rabe documented Japanese atrocities committed during the assault upon and occupation of the city.[9]

John Rabe gave a series of lectures in Germany after he came back to Berlin on 15 April 1938, in which he said, "We Europeans put the number [of civilian casualties] at about 50,000 to 60,000."[10] Rabe was not the only figure to record the Japanese atrocity. By December 1937, after the defeat of the Chinese soldiers, the Japanese soldiers would often go house-to-house in Nanking, shooting any civilians they encountered. Evidence of these violent acts come from diaries kept by some Japanese soldiers and by Japanese journalists who were appalled by what was transpiring.[11]

On 28 February 1938, Rabe left Nanking. He first traveled to Shanghai and then back to Germany. He took with him a large number of source materials documenting the atrocities committed by the Japanese in Nanking.[12]

Rabe showed films and photographs of Japanese atrocities in lecture presentations in Berlin and wrote to Hitler to use his influence to persuade the Japanese to stop any further inhumane violence. As a result, Rabe was detained and interrogated by the Gestapo and his letter was never delivered to Hitler.[13] Due to the intervention of Siemens AG, Rabe was released. He was allowed to keep evidence of the massacre, excluding the film, but was not allowed to lecture again or write on the subject.[13] Rabe continued working for Siemens, which posted him briefly to the safety of Siemens AG of Afghanistan. Rabe subsequently worked in the Berlin headquarters of the company until the end of the war.

After the war, Rabe was arrested first by the Soviet NKVD and then by the British Army. Both, however, let him go after intense interrogation. He worked sporadically for Siemens, earning very little. He was later denounced for his Nazi Party membership by an acquaintance, causing him to be stripped of the work permit that he had previously been given by the British Zone of Occupation, and had to undergo a very lengthy de-nazification process (his first attempt was rejected and he had to appeal) in the hope of regaining the permission to work. He had to pay his own legal defense costs, which depleted his savings.[14]

Unable to work to support his family and with the savings spent the family survived in a one-room apartment by selling his Chinese art collection, but this did not provide enough to avoid malnutrition. He was formally declared "de-Nazified" by the British on 3 June 1946 but thereafter continued to live in poverty. The family lived on wild seeds and the children ate soup and dry bread until that was no longer available either.[14]

In 1948, the citizens of Nanking learned of the very dire situation of the Rabe family in occupied Germany and they quickly raised a very large sum of money, equivalent to $2,000 USD ($21,000 in 2021). The city mayor himself went to Germany, via Switzerland where he bought a large amount of food for the Rabe family. From mid-1948 until the communist takeover the people of Nanking also sent a food package each month, for which Rabe wrote many letters expressing deep gratitude.[14]

John H D Rabe's first tombstone, exhibited in Nanking

Rabe's grave in Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Cemetery in Berlin-Charlottenburg, re-erected in 2013

On 5 January 1950, Rabe died of a stroke. In 1997 his tombstone was moved from Berlin to Nanking (as it is now) where it received a place of honor at the massacre memorial site.

In 2005, Rabe's former residence in Nanking (as it then was) was renovated and now accommodates the "John Rabe and International Safety Zone Memorial Hall", which opened in 2006. The Austrian Service Abroad was invited to send a Peace Servant.

His grave in Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Cemetery in Berlin-Charlottenburg was re-erected in 2013.

His war-time diaries were published in English as The Good German of Nanking (UK title) or The Good Man of Nanking (US title) (original German title: Der gute Deutsche von Nanking).

John Rabe has been portrayed in numerous films:

• In Mou Tun Fei's 1995 film Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre. Minnie Vautrin and George Ashmore Fitch are also depicted.
• In Wu Ziniu's 1995 film Don't Cry, Nanking, actor Ulrich Ottenburger played Rabe, although his name was changed to "John Robbins."
• In Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman's 2007 documentary film Nanking, actor Jürgen Prochnow played Rabe.
• In Lu Chuan's 2009 film City of Life and Death, actor John Paisley played Rabe.
• In Florian Gallenberger's film John Rabe, also released in 2009, Ulrich Tukur played John Rabe.[15]

• Erwin Wickert (editor). (1998). The Good German of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe, Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40211-X
• Original German: (1997). John Rabe. Der gute Deutsche von Nanking. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart. ISBN 3-421-05098-8

Wikimedia Commons has media related to John Rabe.

• John Rabe Peace and Communication Center Heidelberg (in German)
• john-rabe.com at the Wayback Machine (archive index)
• Museum Recalls Hero of 'The Rape of Nanking' Fall 2006 NPR program about Rabe
• https://rabediaries.hypotheses.org/ Research project: John Rabe's Nanking Diaries: Testifying and Contesting War Experiences in China and Japan