John Heinrich Detlef Rabe

German-born John Rabe first came to China in 1908, when he was twenty-six years old. He worked there as a businessman for the next three decades. In 1937, he was among the small group of Western missionaries, doctors, and businessmen who established the International Safety Zone in Nanjing, trying to protect the populace from Japanese atrocities.

Rabe helped to organize the International Committee and drew up the Nanking Safety Zone to provide Chinese refugees with food and shelter upon 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." Although he tried to appeal to the Japanese by using his Nazi membership credentials, this had little effect(Yale, 2016).

On February 23, 1938, John Rabe left Nanjing for Shanghai. In mid-March he sailed for home, arriving in Munich, Germany on April 13. There he tried to use his influence as a member of the Nazi party to alert Germans and Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler about the atrocities. He lectured and showed film footage taken in Nanjing. The Gestapo interrogated Rabe, confiscated the movie, and barred him from lecturing about the Japanese atrocities.

After the war, Rabe was denounced for his Nazi Party membership and arrested by the Russians first and then by the British. However, investigations exonerated him of any wrongdoing. He was formally declared "de-Nazified" by the Allies in June 1946 but thereafter lived in poverty. Rabe was partly supported by the monthly food and money parcels sent by the Chinese government for his actions during the Rape of Nanking(Yale, 2016).

Video on John Rabe's life and reading of letters, portrayed by Jürgen Prochnow

Retrieved from: The Nanking (2007), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfkk-GtM_sI