An agreement was signed yesterday afternoon to turn
the former house of a German national who helped save the lives of
more than 250,000 people in the Nanjing
Massacre of 1937-38 into a memorial hall and research
center.
"The memorial hall is to commemorate John Rabe, who
saved the lives of numerous Nanjing residents during the War of
Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and the center is to
promote academic research of international peace and
reconciliation," said Zhang Rong, vice president of Nanjing
University in the provincial capital of Jiangsu.
His former three-story residence is located inside
the Gulou District campus of Nanjing University, and it could be
open to the public in August.
The university signed an agreement with the German
Consulate General in Shanghai, Siemens China and Siemens Home
Appliances China to establish the John Rabe and International
Safety Zone Memorial Hall and the John Rabe Research and Exchange
Center for Peace and Reconciliation.
"Rabe served as the business representative of
Siemens in Nanjing during World War II," said Peter Borger,
executive vice president of Siemens China. "We are proud of his
legacy in China, where he significantly contributed to the
development of the friendship between China and Germany."
The four organizations agreed to provide 2.25
million?yuan (US$277,435) for the work, with Siemens as the
main contributor.
John Rabe was born in Hamburg in 1882. He came to
China in 1908 and from 1931 to 1938 he was in Nanjing and witnessed
the massacre in which at least 300,000 Chinese people are believed
to have been killed.
His house acted as a refugee camp, taking in at
least 600 citizens, and he kept diaries recording more than 500
atrocities by Japanese soldiers.
He returned to Germany after the massacre and died
of a stroke in 1950.
(China Daily December 7, 2005)