A
plan by China to honor "the good Nazi", a German
who helped save thousands of civilians from
Japanese troops, has reopened a dispute with Tokyo
over its perceived lack of atonement for World War
II atrocities.
Chinese authorities are
drawing up plans for a museum dedicated to the
memory of John Rabe, who defied the "Rape of
Nanking" - a six-week massacre during which an
estimated 300,000 Chinese
were
slaughtered by Japanese soldiers. Honoring Rabe,
who died of a stroke in 1950 at age 67, gives
China the chance to draw international attention
to Japan's wartime atrocities at a point when
relations between the two Asian giants are
fragile.
A card-carrying Nazi, Rabe was a
China-based Siemens employee in 1937 when the
Japanese stormed Nanking, or Nanjing as it is now
known. His superiors ordered him to return home,
but instead he sent his family back and
established a "safety zone" in the city where he
offered shelter to terrified Chinese.
Using his Nazi credentials, he and a small
group of other foreigners kept the Japanese at
bay, at considerable risk to themselves. Some
sources say they saved an estimated 250,000 lives.
Rabe wrote a 1,200-page diary that
documented the killings and rapes in the city,
information that was later used as evidence of war
crimes.
The Japanese soldiers "went about
raping the women and girls and killing everything
and everyone that offered any resistance,
attempted to run away from them, or simply
happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time," he wrote. "There were girls under the age
of eight and women over the age of 70 who were
raped and then, in the most brutal way possible,
knocked down and beaten up. We found corpses of
women who had been lanced by bamboo shoots."
Chinese historians estimate that 80,000
girls and women were raped then.
"One was
powerless against these monsters who were armed to
the teeth and who shot down anyone who tried to
defend themselves," Rabe wrote. "They only had
respect for us foreigners - but nearly every one
of us was close to being killed dozens of times.
We asked ourselves mutually, 'How much longer can
we maintain this bluff'?"
Beijing believes
Japan has never properly atoned for its
atrocities. And Chinese anger is further fueled by
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's
repeated visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine, which
honors Japan's war dead, including some of the
Class A war criminals held responsible for the
massacre in Nanjing.
Recently, Chinese
Premier Wen Jiabao, cancelled a summit with
Koizumi because "Japan won't own up correctly to
its history". The shrine visits "seriously hurt
the feelings of the Chinese people", he said.
When the pair finally met at a signing
ceremony of a regional meeting recently, Wen
snubbed the Japanese leader by ignoring his
request to borrow his pen. Several awkward seconds
elapsed in front of TV cameras before the request
was loudly repeated and the Chinese premier smiled
and handed over the pen.
Also, there were
mass protests in March outside the Japanese
Embassy and consulates in China after Japan
published a history textbook that glossed over the
wartime atrocities.
And tensions between
the neighbors are exacerbated by other thorny
issues, including a territorial dispute over
resource-rich islands in the East China Sea and
Japan's desire to become a permanent member of the
United Nations Security Council. China fears what
it sees as a growing nationalistic militarism in
Japan.
"Part of the reason to honor John
Rabe now is a response to Japan's bad attitude,"
said Jiang Liangqin, a historian at Nanjing
University. "For example, they honor the war
criminals and have never properly said sorry. Some
Japanese even deny the massacre took place. We
know that Japanese often look down on Chinese and
don't believe what we say. Well, here is a
European who told exactly what happened. We want
to bring the world's attention to that."
While the killings were going on, Rabe
wrote to Adolf Hitler several times begging him to
intervene, but never got a response. He said later
that being based in China meant he was unaware of
Hitler's heinous plans in Europe.
After
the massacre, Rabe lectured in wartime Germany
about what he had seen and submitted footage of
the atrocities to Hitler, but the fuhrer did not
want to hear about Japan's actions. Rabe was
detained by the Gestapo for a short period,
denounced by the Nazis and barred from giving
lectures.
In post-war Germany he was again
denounced - this time for being a Nazi - and was
arrested first by the Russians and then the
British, but was ultimately exonerated following
an investigation. He and his family lived in
abject poverty, surviving on occasional care
packages posted to him by the grateful people of
Nanjing.
"The people of China will never
forget the good German, John Rabe, and the other
foreigners who helped him," said Ma Guoliang, an
89-year-old woman whose parents were killed by the
Japanese.
"He saved so many people and yet
at any time he could easily have been killed
himself. He could have left, but he stayed with
us. We called him the living Buddha of Nanking."
