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Post by Admin on Dec 18, 2016 20:26:59 GMT
The Holocaust was a deliberate attempt to exterminate an entire race. The Naking massacre was a collective punishment against Chinese guerrillas who resisted the Japanese invasion by posing as civilians and suspected guerrillas in civilian clothing hiding in the Naking Safety Zone were singled out before being executed by the Japanese military. According to John Rabe who was the main administrator of the Naking Safety Zone, where up to 200,000 Chinese civilians were sheltered, the Japanese killed 50,000-60,000 civilians. Up to 60,000 people lost their lives after going through the selection process by the Japanese military and young men were lined up to get inspected for suspected guerrilla activities. When mothers cried out to Japanese inspectors for mercy, their sons were released.So many lives were spared because of the heroic zone administrator, John Rabe, who is credited with saving 250,000 Chinese civilians, who were sheltered in the Nanking Safety Zone. The population of Nanking was around 300,000 at the time and only 16%-20% of them were massacred, while up to 80% of people in nsurvived. 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 (now Nanjing) 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.[3] On November 22, 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."[4] The zones were located in all of the foreign embassies and at Nanking University. 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. The Nanking Massacre killed 50,000 to 60,000 civilians according to John Rabe, while Rabe and his zone administrators tried frantically to stop the atrocities. His 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.[5]
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Post by Admin on Dec 17, 2017 18:47:25 GMT
John Rabe, a sarcastic Nazi who spoke almost no Chinese and worked as an electronics middle manager in Nanjing, was in his house, packing a bag of first aid supplies. Rabe, unexpectedly and improbably, had just become the most powerful civilian in Nanjing. Months earlier, Rabe decided he could not abandon the Chinese mechanics and engineers he employed at the Nanjing branch of Siemens China Company. After all, Rabe had lived and worked in China for nearly 30 years. It was home. After Rabe learned he was one of the few foreigners who planned to stay through the siege, he reluctantly agreed to become chairman of the International Safety Zone Committee, a group tasked with establishing a safe zone for refugees. Rabe partnered closely with the mayor of Nanjing to establish this safe zone, but after the mayor and other government officials fled the city, and the Chinese military and police had retreated or were killed, Rabe became the de-facto leader of the city itself. As early as the prior summer, Nanjing civilians flocked to Rabe, as if he carried a magic talisman to ward off danger. With each air raid, Rabe’s self-dug backyard trench became more and more crowded. Packed in beside him were his coworkers, servants, neighbours, mailmen and all their wives and children. Rabe even decided to admit his cobbler, with whom he had had a long-standing rivalry (the cobbler, evidently, had up charged him on a pair of boots). The Chinese version of wartime history completely ignores the fact that the Nanking Safety Zone even existed, in which John Rabe heroically saved 200,000 civilians who were sheltered there, which is why China's official casualty figure (300,000) includes 200,000 civilians who were actually alive, presuming that the Japanese military killed everyone in Nanking indiscriminately and no one was kept alive. The Diaries of John Rabe further recorded that there were sporadic violence and rape against civilians in the Safety Zone, about which Rabe personally complained to Japanese military authorities. We are sorry to trouble you again but the sufferings and needs of the 200,000 civilians for whom we are trying to care make it urgent that we try to secure action from your military authorities to stop the present disorder among Japanese soldiers wandering through the Safety Zone... The second man in our Housing Commission had to see two women in his family at 23 Hankow Road raped last night at supper time by Japanese soldiers. Our associate food commissioner, Mr. Sone, has to convey trucks with rice and leave 2,500 people in families at his Nanking Theological Seminary to look after themselves. Yesterday, in broad daylight, several women at the Seminary were raped right in the middle of a large room filled with men, women, and children! We 22 Occidentals cannot feed 200,000 Chinese civilians and protect them night and day. That is the duty of the Japanese authorities ... A View of Nanking Safety Zone on December 15, 1937 (Photo taken by Mainichi Shimbun)
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Post by Admin on Dec 19, 2017 19:25:42 GMT
These interlopers occasionally vexed Rabe. After a heavy-set man sat in the centre of the trench (the safest part), Rabe posted a passive-aggressive note at the dugout entrance, demanding that only women and children sit in the centre (Rabe himself always sat near the edge). Still, despite his grumbles, Rabe never turned anyone away. On 12 December, knowing the Japanese were about to take the city, Rabe grabbed some bandages and ran thoughtfully through the rooms of his house, as if he were saying goodbye. At the last minute, he saw photographs of his grandchildren and tucked them into his bag. Even then, his trademark gallows humour was intact. Every morning and night, he would pray, “Dear God, watch over my family and my good humour; I’ll take care of the other incidentals myself”. But the next few days would be filled with a horror he had never known, and the events of that year would change his life forever. History doesn’t look kindly upon Nazis, but Rabe’s status as the leader of Nanjing’s Nazi party is precisely what allowed him save so many Chinese lives during the massacre. At the time, World War II had not begun, but the Japanese had warily allied with Germany. Once the Japanese entered the city, Rabe said, he could simply shout, “Deutsch”, or, “Hitler”, and the soldiers would snap to attention.
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Post by Admin on Dec 20, 2017 19:11:39 GMT
Rabe spent his days in a nightmarish whack-a-mole style pursuit of marauding Japanese troops. His physical presence ensured the safety of the Chinese, so he raced from one impending rape or murder to the next, praying that he could intervene in time. On the first day of Japanese occupation, Rabe chased Japanese soldiers out of his yard, which was then crammed with about 60,000 refugees, and he was immediately called to his neighbour’s house to ward off another soldier on the brink of rape. He returned home to find yet another rape in progress. When the constant violence made a woman ill, Rabe sent her to the hospital, only to learn the nurses were being raped as well. He was a force of one against swarms of thousands. Meanwhile, the remaining Chinese soldiers flocked to clothing stores, spending their last cent on civilian clothes to disguise themselves after the city had fallen. Rabe watched them change clothing in the streets and vanish into the city. In the end, most soldiers were discovered. Rabe wrote that he watched the Japanese tie up “some thousand” Chinese men in an open field, and looked on helplessly as small groups were led away, forced to kneel and shot in the back of the head.
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Post by Admin on Dec 22, 2017 18:59:45 GMT
Rabe’s former porter was shot, for seemingly no reason at all. Rabe wrote, “His old certificate of employment, issued by the German embassy, lies before me drenched with blood”. For the next two months, Rabe managed the Safety Zone, which was soon packed with 250,000 refugees, more than he anticipated in even the worst-case scenario. Japanese soldiers distributing gifts to Chinese citizens in the Nanking Safety Zone. Photo from the North China Daily News, He spent his days roaming the city, trying to prevent rapes and murders, even once physically lifting a soldier from atop a young girl. He hid hundreds of women on his property and armed them with whistles to call him if a soldier ever entered. Nanjing citizens started calling him “the living Buddha of Nanking”.
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