John Rabe Diary 3

John Rabe was the head of the Nazi Party in Nanking and the leader of the International Safety Zone Committee in Nanking. The following is from the pages of the journal that he kept during the Rape of Nanking.

Estimated date: winter, 1938, after the worst of the massacres.

Groups of three to ten marauding soldiers would begin by traveling through the city and robbing whatever there was to steal. They would continue by 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. During their misdeeds, no difference was made between adults and children. 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 beat up. We found corpses of women on beer glasses and others who had been speared by bamboo shoots. I saw the victims with my own eyes--I talked to some of them right before their deaths. Later, I had their bodies brought to the morgue at Kulo Hospital so that I could be personally convinced that all of these reports had been the truth.

You would have thought it impossible, but the raping of women even occurred right in the middle of the women's camp in our zone, which held between 5,000 and 10,000 women. The few of us foreigners could be at all places all the time in order to protect people against these atrocities. One was powerless against these monsters who were armed to the teeth and who shot down anyone who tried to defend themselves. They only had respect for us foreigners—because the Nazis had signed an alliance with their country’s leaders. However, nearly every one of us was close to being killed dozens of times. Only my position in the Nazi party saved many others and myself. The Japanese seemed afraid of the German Nazis but we asked ourselves mutually, "How much longer can we maintain this 'bluff'?"

--John Rabe, Leader of the International Safety Zone Committee and head of the Nazi Party in Nanking