John Rabe & Chiune Sugihara: Two unsung holocaust heros and the ultimate irony

[Pennstate]

These two heros are "Oskar Schindlers" in their own right. THe ultimate Irony is that John Rabe was a Nazi party member, and Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese (Nazi ally at the time) dimplomat in Lithuania during WWII. THe parallels shared by these two people are striking. They were both punished by their governments for their actions and their careers were destroyed because of it.

I have not had time to read books on them, but here are some links on these two extrodinary human beings






Chiune Sugihara #1
Chiune Sugihara #2
One of of the few Sugihara books at amazon



Review of John Rabe's Diary
amazon link to his book
site dedicated to Rabe
New York TImes review

 

[b0mbrman]

True, these people are definitely heroes but the biggest hero of WWII still has to be Anne Frank.

 

[Pennstate]

I disagree, Anne Frank was an example of a tragedy. A hero is something who risk their life for the benefit of others. Unfortunately, Anne Frank was not in that position.

 

[Pennstate]

FOr those of you who are too lazy to click the links:

The Good Nazi
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The diaries of a German civilian who saved thousands during the Rape of Nanking.
By SHERYL WUDUNN

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THE GOOD MAN OF NANKING
The Diaries of John Rabe.
By John Rabe.
Edited by Erwin Wickert.
Illustrated. 294 pp. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf. $26.
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ixty-one years ago, Japanese soldiers captured the ancient Chinese capital of Nan-king, torturing, raping and killing vast numbers of people in one of the bloodiest massacres in modern history. Yet there is a stunning difference of opinion on exactly what took place. Some Japanese have tried to say -- perhaps wishfully -- that the massacre never happened, while many Chinese regard it as a symbol of Japanese brutality and one of the ugliest landmarks of an ugly century.

Thus, there is a deep and divided body of literature on the Rape of Nanking, as the incident has become known, but most of that literature is, by necessity, dependent on secondary sources. That is why ''The Good Man of Nanking'' soars above most of the rest. Essentially the diaries of one man, John Rabe, a German businessman for the Siemens China Company, the work is at once riveting, inspiring, terrifying and tragically sad. It is also, in an odd way, refreshing. For Rabe is modest, unpolemical. He is, by turns, naive and cynical, generous and materialistic, outraged and calm. His account is compassionate and, at times, humorous, with an understated horror that seethes through the straightforward delivery.

Rabe not only witnessed the slaughter as the Japanese captured Nanking (now known as Nanjing) in December 1937, he also saved the lives of many people. By invoking the name of Hitler, he gained tacit approval from the Japanese to set up a special safety zone that ended up sheltering a couple of hundred thousand Chinese from the rampaging Japanese soldiers. The zone lasted about four months.

A Nazi who originally supported Hitler, Rabe chose not to flee Nanjing with most of the other foreigners as the Japanese approached. He remarked in his diary: ''I don't love being shelled . . . but I simply cannot bring myself to save my skin just yet.''

So Rabe stayed behind in Nanjing to set up a small shelter, which quickly expanded into a vast safety zone. He had his tussles with the Chinese, particularly the Chinese troops, who kept sneaking into his shelter, even digging trenches to secure safety behind its walls. The Chinese military's presence, of course, made the shelter a prime target for the Japanese, so Rabe wanted them out.

They did not leave, even as the Japanese began bombing their way into the city. Mean-while, everyone else was pleading to be let into the shelter. ''I can't listen to their wailing any longer, so I open both gates and let everyone in who wants in,'' he writes.

This was just the beginning of the chaos, though. Rabe's initial hopes that the Japanese would capture the city peacefully -- their planes dropped pamphlets saying that all civilians would be ''treated humanely in all respects'' -- soon gave way to frustration, then horror and despair. ''We come across corpses every 100 to 200 yards,'' he writes on Dec. 13, 1937, the day after the Japanese took control. ''The bodies of civilians that I examined had bullet holes in their backs. These people had presumably been fleeing and were shot from behind.''

Japanese soldiers looted, smashed, burned people and buildings -- whatever was in their way, whatever was their fancy, Rabe says. They entered his safety zone to pillage, rape and murder. Just behind Rabe's garden wall, a woman was raped and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. Nurses at the nearby hospital were also violated.

''Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling Girls College alone,'' Rabe reports on Dec. 17. ''You hear of nothing but rape. If husbands or brothers intervene, they're shot. What you hear and see on all sides is the brutality and bestiality of the Japanese soldiery.''

Then the Japanese began burning down the city and the people in it. When army officers demanded Chinese workers, a trusting Rabe suggested where they could be found. Days later, he discovered that 43 of the 54 workers the Japanese had rounded up were led to the riverbank and machine-gunned, ''ostensibly because they were the employees of an enterprise managed by the Chinese Government.''

Rabe mentions one day when he was cleaning the safety zone: ''We find many bodies in the ponds, civilians who have been shot (30 in just one pond), most of them with their hands bound, some with stones tied to their necks.'' At another time, he complains that 50 corpses lay unburied. At still another, he reports that a German colleague saw 300 corpses in a dry ditch near one of the city gates.

Rabe records all sorts of atrocities: a woman is found dead with a golf ball inside her vagina, another bayoneted there. ''You can't breathe for sheer revulsion when you keep finding the bodies of women with bamboo poles thrust up their vaginas,'' he writes. ''Even old women over 70 are constantly being raped.''

Meanwhile, Rabe hears from a Japanese Foreign Ministry official that Tokyo has asked for order to be restored. But he cannot get approval even to bury the dead, and he points to ''the danger to which we are all exposed as long as perhaps a thousand corpses are lying about the city unburied.'' He continues: ''These corpses have been partially eaten by dogs. At the same time, however, dog meat is being sold by the Chinese in the streets.''

As Nanjing starved, the crops outside the city walls lay rotting because no one was allowed to go out to harvest them. Rabe surmises that the Japanese wanted the Chinese to starve to death. He compares the soldiers to the ''hordes of Genghis Khan'' and laments: ''One might well believe the Japanese Army is made up of ex-convicts. Normal people do not behave this way.''

One of the most intriguing aspects of these diaries is that while Rabe recounts tortures, rapes and mass murders by the Japanese, he appears not to have seen many of the atrocities that are commonly described by the Chinese themselves. There are no accounts of live burials, mass disembowelments, deaths by freezing or death by being eaten alive by dogs.

Japanese soldiers would naturally have tried to avoid torturing Chinese in front of foreign witnesses, but Rabe was also getting reports of atrocities from his Chinese assistants. It is unlikely that the book's editor, Erwin Wickert, who had known Rabe and obtained the diaries from his granddaughter, would have left such stories out. So it is probable that Rabe, who did not speak Chinese, simply did not see these particular atrocities, or did not dare to record them for some reason. It is also possible that these crimes were committed in extreme secrecy. Or perhaps they did not occur at all.

Even now, an emotional debate rages over how many people actually lost their lives at the hands of the Japanese. Some Chinese estimates go as high as 200,000 to 300,000, a number that was recently popularized by Iris Chang in her book, ''The Rape of Nanking.'' In his diary, Rabe says that out of an initial population of 1.2 million people, about 800,000 fled before Nanjing was captured. He writes that about 250,000 ended up in his safety zone, and though many were killed there, most survived. That would leave about 150,000 people unaccounted for by Rabe.

Basing his numbers on reports from one of the humanitarian groups involved in burying the dead, Rabe estimates that a total of 50,000 to 60,000 people were actually killed, and those are the numbers that he used when he returned to Germany and lectured on his experiences in China. (When he tried to send a report of the atrocities to Hitler, he was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo; upon his release, he stopped speaking publicly about Nanjing.)

Rabe recorded the deaths he saw in his diaries, but he did not keep a tally of the dead. That is unfortunate. However, he certainly had enough on his hands.




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Sheryl WuDunn is a Tokyo-based correspondent for The New York Times who, with her husband, Nicholas D. Kristof, is the author of ''China Wakes.''



Sugihara


The Heroism of Chiune Sugihara

by Veronica Green

This paper is about a Holocaust hero named Chiune Sugihara. At the beginning of World War II, Sugihara saved six thousand Jews who were trying to escape Nazi cruelty. His courage and bravery is now praised by thousands of Jews. Many tributes have been made to Sugihara, who has been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.' His background and how he saved many Jews is explained in detail.

A hero is someone who is greatly regarded for his achievements or qualities. There are many ways to see a hero, as the main figure in a poem, play or story, sometimes as a warrior. To be a hero takes boldness, courage, and dignity. I believe a hero has to have a kind and thoughtful heart in order to achieve his actions. Along with being a hero, it takes a lot of sacrifice and risk. Heroes sometimes sacrifice their career, future, or family, and they sometimes risk losing their lives. Not every one can be a hero, but when someone strives to help another person from danger, he or she should gain some kind of recognition for his or her actions.

Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese consul in Lithuania whose bravery is praised by many Jewish people. He risked his career and his future to save six thousand Jews in the beginning of World War II. Sugihara gave Jews entry visas, which was against the order of the Japanese government. Because of his actions, he lost his job and respectability in much of Japanese society (Foster).

Chiune Sugihara was born on January 1, 1900, in Yaotsu, Gifu Pref., and died on July 31, 1986. As a young man in junior high school, he was good at English and hoped to be an English teacher. As an adult, Sugihara was interested in foreign ideas, religion, philosophy and language. He married a Caucasian women named Yukiko, who helped him greatly in saving the Jews. Sugihara was raised in the strict Japanese code of ethics in a samurai family. He learned the virtues of the Japanese society, that included love for the family , for the sake of the children, duty and responsibility, or obligation to repay a debt, and not to bring shame on the family. Internal strength and resourcefulness and withholding of emotions on the surface, were other virtues Sugihara learned and displayed in his attempted to rescue the Jews. These virtues were strongly enforced by Sugihara's middle-class rural samurai family (Saul).

The German invasion of Poland filled Lithuania with Jewish refugees who were escaping from Hitler's advancing troops. In order for the fugitives to escape, they needed transit visas. Without these visas it was dangerous to travel, and it was impossible to find countries willing to issue them ("Sugihara&quot. On a summer morning in late July, 1940, consul Sugihara awakened to a crowd of Jewish refugees gathered outside the consulate. The refugees knew that their only path lay to the east and if Sugihara would grant them Japanese transit visas, they could obtain exit visas and race to possible freedom. Sugihara needed permission from the Japanese Foreign Ministry; otherwise, he had no authority to issue out hundreds of visas. But permission was denied three times by the Japanese government. Now Sugihara was faced with a difficult decision. He had to make a choice that would probably result in extreme financial hardship for his family in the future. He also knew that if he went against the orders of his government, he might be fired and disgraced, and never work for Japans' government again (Saul).

Sugihara made a decision based on the hundreds of desperate Jews lined up outside the consulate. He disobeyed the Japanese government and forged documents to help the refugees to safety (Kelly). Sugihara and his wife wrote over three hundred visas a day, which would normally be done in one month by the consul. He did not even stop to eat because he chose not to lose a minute. People were standing in line in front of his consulate day and night for these visas. After getting their visas, the refugees lost no time in getting on trains that took them to Moscow, and then by trans-Siberian railroad to Vladivostok. They had escaped the death camps and the Holocaust all together (Saul).

In 1945, the Japanese government informally dismissed Chiune Sugihara from the diplomatic service and his career was shattered. Then Sugihara and his family were forced to leave Lithuania and go to Romania. In Romania, as punishment for his illegal actions, he was imprisoned for two years. When he returned to Japan, he was in disgrace. He worked at odd jobs to support his family (Kelly). Sugihara never spoke about his dismissal because it was too painful for him. He also never spoke about his deeds. Donald Gartman, director of the United Jewish Federation of Utah, said Sugihara obeyed his conscience about what he thought was the right thing to do and not the directives of his country (Foster). He had the power to produce effects of his efforts. For example, even as he was on the train that was pulling away form Lithuania on his way to prison, he was still signing papers as fast as he could and throwing them out of the window (Kelly).

Forty-five years after signing the visas, he was asked why he did it. Sugihara liked to give two reasons: one, that these refugees were humans beings, and the other, that they simply needed help. Sugihara believed in God and chose to disobeyed his government rather then disobey God. He deserves to be honored and remembered, and many people, especially the thousands of Jewish who were rescued, owe their lives to this Japanese man and his family. Chiune's heroism was left unnoticed for more than twenty years. Despite the difficult decision he made, he never claimed any type of reimbursement. Tributes have been made and many Jews are proud of his heroic efforts. Sugihara has been recognized as Righteous Among the Nation' by the Yad Vashem Martyrs Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. Along with this recognition a tree was planted in his name at Yad Vashem, and a park in Jerusalem was named in his honor (Saul).

Heroes who resisted Nazi cruelty were under lots of pressure on what decisions they should take to save Jews. If they were caught they would probably face imprisonment, execution, or sent to the death camps. Chiune Sugihara shows how he didn't fear any of these punishments. All he wanted was to rescue desperate Jews who asked for his help. I believe Sugihara's rare courage came from the morals he learned from his Japanese family, and also from his strong belief in the universal God of all people. Moreover, his story shows us how the Holocaust was a nightmare that no one wanted to live through. Sugihara made the right decision to follow his heart and conscience to do the right thing. If not, many Jews would have died if Sugihara had not been there for them.

Works Cited Foster, Shauw. "Groups to Remember War Hero Who Saved Jews From Death." The Salt Lake Tribute. 24 November 1996. http://www.sltrib.com:80/96/NOV/24/tci/01105245.htm (11 February 1997).

Kelly, Jill. "Son of Holocaust Hero Praises His Father's Action." Yale News. 15 April 1996. http://www.yale.edu/ydu/paper/4.15.96storyno.BC.html (11 February 1997).

Saul, Eric. "Visas for Life: The Remarkable Story of Chiune and Yukiko Sugihara." 1995. http://www.hooked.net/users/rgreened/Sug.html (7 February 1997).

"Sugihara." Holocaust Memorial Center. http://www.holocaustcenter.com:80/sugihara.html (11 February 1997).


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[b0mbrman]

Anne Frank was killed only because she was Jewish! How can you say she wasn't a hero?!

 

[FrontlineWarrior]

<< True, these people are definitely heroes but the biggest hero of WWII still has to be Anne Frank. >>



how does living in an attic qualify as heroic?

 

[FrontlineWarrior]

Main Entry: he·ro
Pronunciation: 'hir-(&quotO, 'hE-(&quotrO
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural heroes
Etymology: Latin heros, from Greek hErOs
Date: 14th century
1 a : a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability b : an illustrious warrior c : a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities d : one that shows great courage
2 a : the principal male character in a literary or dramatic work b : the central figure in an event, period, or movement
3 plural usually heros : SUBMARINE 2
4 : an object of extreme admiration and devotion : IDOL



I guess under some definitions, Anne Frank could be called a hero. Still, it would be a stretch.

1a: no
1b: no
1c: achievements include writing a diary (stretch), noble qualities include - not being a stupid bitch (doesn't seem &quot;noble&quot
1d: courage? hmmm someone can make an argument for that i suppose

maybe 4 qualifies...