Film about Nazi humanitarian in China wins major German prize

[Sunni Man]

A film based on the true story of a Nazi who helped save 200,000 Chinese civilians from the Nanking Massacre has dominated the German Film Awards, winning prizes for best film, actor, art direction and costume design.

Ulrich Tukur plays the lead role of John Rabe while Dagmar Manzel plays his wife Dora
"John Rabe" is a German-Chinese co-production that sheds light on the little-known story of a German businessman who came to be known as "China's Oskar Schindler".

Born in Hamburg, Germany, John Rabe spent much of his adult life in China, working as an executive for German industrial giant Siemens.

While most foreigners fled the national capital Nanking when Japanese forces invaded China in 1937, Rabe stayed behind and helped form the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, which provided fleeing Chinese civilians with food and shelter.

Rabe was elected as its leader, in part because of his Nazi party membership and the existence of the Anti-Comintern Pact between Japan and Germany.

While Japanese forces agreed not to attack areas that did not contain Chinese military forces, Rabe and the international committee managed to persuade the Chinese government to move all its troops away from the city's Western quarter.

Although the resulting safe haven measured just seven square kilometers, it was credited with saving between 200,000 and 250,000 Chinese people from the wave of killings, rapes and looting that followed the city's fall.

Film about Nazi humanitarian in China wins major German prize | Culture | DW.DE | 25.04.2009

 

[Sunni Man]

At the Rape of Nanking: A Nazi Who Saved Lives

When the invading Japanese Army overran the Nationalist Chinese capital in December 1937, soldiers embarked on a two-month rampage of looting, rape and killing that left tens of thousands of Chinese civilians dead in what became known as the Rape of Nanking.

Now a recently unearthed diary reveals an unlikely rescuer of thousands of Chinese: a German businessman living in China who was the leader of the local Nazi organization.

The businessman, John Rabe, kept a 1,200-page diary that provides a rare third-party account of the atrocities. In it, he writes of digging foxholes in his backyard to shelter 650 Chinese and of repelling Japanese troops who tried to climb over the wall, of dashing through war-torn areas to deliver rice, and of stopping Japanese soldiers from raping Chinese women. He even wrote to Hitler to complain about the Japanese actions.

''These escapades were quite dangerous,'' he wrote in his diary. ''The Japanese had pistols and bayonets and I -- as mentioned before -- had only party symbols and my swastika armband.''

Mr. Rabe (pronounced RAH-bay), who died in 1950, lived and worked in China from 1908 to 1938. His diary sheds light on a heretofore little-known man, who, although a Nazi loyalist, risked his life and his status to save people who would later become his country's enemies. Indeed, Mr. Rabe's outspoken support for the Chinese upon his return to Germany appears to have ruined his career.

Some who have followed his case say that he, like Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who protected Jews under very different circumstances, offers another example of the durability of humanitarian impulses in the cruelest of times.

Scholars say Mr. Rabe's diary, which includes reports from other foreign observers, photos and other memorabilia, is valuable not so much for revealing new historical facts, but because it provides an unusually detailed and personal account from a German witness to an incident considered among the most brutal in modern warfare. They believe the diary to be authentic, because American missionaries in China who were Mr. Rabe's contemporaries knew of his actions and supplied similar accounts of atrocities.

The diary also offers a counterweight to claims by some Japanese officials who have long denied either the existence or the scale of the massacre in Nanking, which is now known as Nanjing.

Mr. Rabe (pronounced RAH-bay), who died in 1950, lived and worked in China from 1908 to 1938. His diary sheds light on a heretofore little-known man, who, although a Nazi loyalist, risked his life and his status to save people who would later become his country's enemies. Indeed, Mr. Rabe's outspoken support for the Chinese upon his return to Germany appears to have ruined his career.

Some who have followed his case say that he, like Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who protected Jews under very different circumstances, offers another example of the durability of humanitarian impulses in the cruelest of times.

Scholars say Mr. Rabe's diary, which includes reports from other foreign observers, photos and other memorabilia, is valuable not so much for revealing new historical facts, but because it provides an unusually detailed and personal account from a German witness to an incident considered among the most brutal in modern warfare. They believe the diary to be authentic, because American missionaries in China who were Mr. Rabe's contemporaries knew of his actions and supplied similar accounts of atrocities.

The diary also offers a counterweight to claims by some Japanese officials who have long denied either the existence or the scale of the massacre in Nanking, which is now known as Nanjing.

Mr. Rabe (pronounced RAH-bay), who died in 1950, lived and worked in China from 1908 to 1938. His diary sheds light on a heretofore little-known man, who, although a Nazi loyalist, risked his life and his status to save people who would later become his country's enemies. Indeed, Mr. Rabe's outspoken support for the Chinese upon his return to Germany appears to have ruined his career.

Some who have followed his case say that he, like Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who protected Jews under very different circumstances, offers another example of the durability of humanitarian impulses in the cruelest of times.

Scholars say Mr. Rabe's diary, which includes reports from other foreign observers, photos and other memorabilia, is valuable not so much for revealing new historical facts, but because it provides an unusually detailed and personal account from a German witness to an incident considered among the most brutal in modern warfare. They believe the diary to be authentic, because American missionaries in China who were Mr. Rabe's contemporaries knew of his actions and supplied similar accounts of atrocities.

The diary also offers a counterweight to claims by some Japanese officials who have long denied either the existence or the scale of the massacre in Nanking, which is now known as Nanjing.

It is not clear whether Mr. Rabe embraced the oppression of Jews and other groups in Nazi Germany. He lived outside Germany during the time of Hitler's rise to power, and there is no record of the extent of his activities in the Nazi Party after he returned to Germany in 1938, according to Ms. Chang. Because scholars, who received the diary only a few days ago, have not finished reading it, they cannot say if it contains expressions of anti-Semitism.

But Mr. Rabe was outspoken in his support for Nazism. In a lecture he delivered after his return to Germany in February 1938, he said, ''Although I feel tremendous sympathy for the suffering of China, I am still, above all, pro-German and I believe not only in the correctness of our political system but, as an organizer of the party, I am behind the system 100 percent.''

At the Rape of Nanking: A Nazi Who Saved Lives - New York Times

 

[Mushroom]

Probably would have been more appropriate under history, but cool.