John Heinrich Detlef Rabe was a German businessman and Nazi Party member best known for his efforts to stop war crimes during the Japanese Nanjing Massacre and his work to protect and help Chinese civilians during the massacre that ensued. The Nanking Safety Zone, which he helped to establish, sheltered approximately 250,000 Chinese people from being killed. He officially represented Germany and acted as senior chief of the European-U.S. establishment that remained in Nanjing, the Chinese capital at the time, when the city fell to the Japanese troops.
John Rabe
John and Dora Rabe autograph signatures, Nanjing, 22 May 1932
The former residence of John Rabe in Nanjing, located in the Nanking Safety Zone during the Nanjing Massacre
A statue of John Rabe in the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall
The Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanking and the retreat of the National Revolutionary Army in the Second Sino-Japanese War, by the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning on December 13, 1937, the massacre lasted six weeks. The perpetrators also committed other war crimes such as mass rape, looting, torture, and arson. The massacre is considered to be one of the worst wartime atrocities.
A Japanese soldier pictured with the corpses of Chinese civilians by the Qinhuai River
An article on the "Contest to kill 100 people using a sword" published in the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun. The headline reads, "'Incredible Record' (in the Contest to Cut Down 100 People) – Mukai 106–105 Noda – Both 2nd Lieutenants Go into Extra Innings".
A sword used in the "contest" is on display at the Republic of China Armed Forces Museum in Taipei, Taiwan
Prince Yasuhiko Asaka in 1935.