THE GOOD MAN OF NANKING: The Diaries of John Rabe
by John Rabe
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Book Summary Information
Author: John RabeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-03-14
ISBN: 0375701974
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of THE GOOD MAN OF NANKING: The Diaries of John Rabe
Book Review: And it never happened...
Summary: 5 Stars
First and foremost, one should question the reason why a book is written. Is there a hidden agenda? When dealing with a sensitive subject such as Nanking, it is best to keep an eye open for any biased style that could be behind the book.
This was written by someone who was present at the time the Japanese occupied Nanking. That someone was a man named John Rabe. He was a German businessman who was a manager of a Siemans company branch, and was warned by his superiors to leave Nanking at once. However he didn't heed their warning and decided to stay at his home because he felt that he would've abandoned his 30 years with the company and his Chinese staff members and helpers whom he called his extended family if he did. So John Rabe would stay to witness and document all that happened in Nanking in his personal diaries.
The book gives some background on Rabe, a little bit about the war, his role at Nanking in establishing an "International Safety Zone" for what grew to save the lives of 250,000 Chinese civilians. The book closes with period where he finally goes home to his native Germany. Sadly enough, he dies in poverty though he was promised a fortune if he testified in the War Crime Tribunal against the Japanese army. But he declinded because he thought if anyone should punish those who participated in the slaughter at Nanking, it "should be the Japanese goverment itself."
While in Nanking, Rabe writes candidly not from reflection years later, but with the clarity of the events happening daily. He sees and documents:
- women being indiscriminately raped. Even 60 year old women were raped. After being raped, they were often killed with bayonettes slashing their throats or stabbed into their abdomens. Sometimes pregant women were killed and their fetus ripped out. There were also cases of soliders ramming bottles and other objects into the women's vaginas. If a woman wasn't singlehandly raped by one soldier, there were groups of soldiers who would often take turns raping a woman.
- ordinary civilians being killed, despite claims that only Chinese soldiers were to be killed. Whole families were often massacred and babies were not spared.
- groups of people being machine gunned at a time, and when the Japanese soldiers thought it would rouse too much suspicion from Rabe, they began to use quieter methods such as using bayonettes.
- live Chinese men being tied to poles and their bodies used for bayonette practice
- whole families or groups of people being locked inside a house and burned to death.
- individuals being doused with gasoline and set afire
- numerous ponds in Nanking being contaminated with decomposing bodies and streets were littered with bodies. Rabe and another organization, had to plead and ask permission from the Japanese soldiers in order for them to bury the bodies themselves.
- even those who were of a very peaceful and harmless nature were murdered. Monks and abbots of a nearby Buddhist monestary were killed; thier bodies dumped into a pit.
Despite some of the cases above, Rabe spares many gruesome details. He just writes the facts and often leaves out any personal feelings towards the Japanese. It would be easy to assume he is a neutral man without wanting to harbor any bad feelings towards anyone. That was his intention. Rabe also writes with a style that is the modesty of someone who wouldn't know how important his diaries would be. For instance, he writes "Everyone thinks I'm a hero, and that can be very annoying; for I can see nothing heroic about me or within me." Rabe didn't intend for this diaries to be published. In fact, his diaries were left to his family after his death, and they even considered throwing them away because of all the "bad things it contained." He hoped above all that international relations would improve.
John Rabe presents the unbiased truth of what happened at Nanking. He even states himself that it "is not his intention to engage in anti-Japanese propaganda, nor arouse pro-Chinese sentiments." Readers should also take this position. Books like this are meant to describe history as how it happened. He documents events with accuracy of time, location, and description of incidents. He was there and witnessed events with his own eyes. This book gives an unbiased look and is a good book for anyone who is willing to submerge themselves into a world of hostility that was Nanking in 1937-38.
Summary of THE GOOD MAN OF NANKING: The Diaries of John Rabe
The Good Man of Nanking is a crucial document for understanding one of World War II's most horrific incidents of genocide, one which the Japanese have steadfastly refused to acknowledge. It is also the moving and awe-inspiring record of one man's conscience, courage, and generosity in the face of appalling human brutality.Until the recent emergence of John Rabe's diaries, few people knew abouth the unassuming hero who has been called the Oskar Schindler of China. In Novemgber 1937, as Japanese troops overran the Chinese capital of Nanking and began a campaign of torture, rape, and murder against its citizens, one man-a German who had lived in China for thirty years and who was a loyal follower of Adolph Hitler-put himself at risk and in order to save the lives of 200,000 poor Chinese, 600 of whom he sheltered in his own home.
In November 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army took Nanking (Nanjing), the capital of China and home to 1.3 million people, and began an orgy of murder, rape, and looting. By the time discipline was restored two months later, hundreds of thousands of Chinese were dead, with hundreds of thousands more homeless, starving, and traumatized. The Rape of Nanking, as it is commonly known, still causes international controversy, as Japanese politicians refuse to apologize unequivocally to China and school textbooks continue to misrepresent the events.
Like Oskar Schindler of Schindler's List, John Rabe was an enterprising and fundamentally decent German businessman caught up in war. Head of the Nanjing branch of Siemens, the German electronics firm, he had lived and worked in China for almost 30 years. Rather than flee from the threatened city, he stayed to organize a safety zone as refuge of last resort for Chinese civilians. The Good Man of Nanking is his firsthand description of the terrible events and his ultimate success in saving perhaps a quarter of a million lives. The diary format provides a forum for the extraordinary power and immediacy of John Rabe's words, including his gallows humor, placing the reader there in Nanking as the bombs explode and the Japanese soldiers begin their massacres. Rabe's trials were not over when he returned to wartime Germany; diary entries that he wrote during the occupation of Berlin by the Soviet army form a fascinating coda to this book. --John Stevenson
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