John Rabe

A German Businessman in Nanjing

John Rabe was born in Hamburg in 1882 and spent most of his adult life in China as a representative of the Siemens company. He arrived in China in 1908 and settled in Nanjing in 1931, where he became a respected figure in the foreign community. He was a member of the Nazi Party — a fact he would later use strategically, displaying the swastika flag to deter Japanese soldiers from entering the safety zone — though his motivations throughout the massacre were humanitarian rather than ideological.

Chairman of the International Safety Zone

As Japanese forces closed in on Nanjing in late November 1937, Rabe and a group of foreign residents — diplomats, missionaries, and businessmen — organised the International Safety Zone in the western part of the city. Rabe was elected chairman. The zone, covering roughly 3.8 square kilometres, eventually sheltered an estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Chinese civilians. Rabe used his Nazi Party credentials to appeal directly to Japanese military commanders and to the German embassy, with limited but real effect. He documented what he witnessed in detailed daily diary entries, recording specific incidents of killing, rape, and looting with dates, locations, and names where known.

Return to Germany and Posthumous Recognition

Rabe returned to Germany in early 1938. He attempted to alert Hitler to the Japanese atrocities — and was promptly arrested by the Gestapo and ordered to remain silent. He spent the postwar years in poverty in Berlin, his Siemens pension suspended; a group of Nanjing survivors and the municipal government sent food parcels to sustain him in his final years. He died in 1950. His diary, long held privately, was donated to the Yale Divinity School in 1996 and published in English and German. It is now considered one of the most important primary sources on the Nanjing Massacre. In 1997 the city of Nanjing restored his former residence as a memorial.