A RARE wartime diary containing a detailed personal account by a German witness to the Nanjing Massacre, carried out by invading Japanese troops in 1937, came to light on Wednesday in New York, China News Service reported.
The writer of the diary, German businessman John H. Rabe (1882-1950), worked in China as the top representative for the Siemens Company and was chairman of an international neutral zone in Nanjing.
In eight volumes, the 2,117 pages of diary and other material made public by Rabe's grand-daughter Ursula Reinhardt give a detailed record of how the Japanese invaders overran the Nationalist Chinese capital. The two-month rampage of looting, rape and killing by the Japanese left tens of thousands of Chinese civilians dead.
In his diary entry for December 15, 1937, Rabe wrote: "Piles of corpses of Chinese civilians killed can be seen everywhere in the city, especially in the streets and lakes near the outskirts of the city."
The women raped by the invaders were aged from 7 to 70, he wrote.
Rabe began the diary on September 19, 1937 and ended it in April 1938.
After he returned Germany in early 1938, he wrote to Hitler on June 8 that year, disclosing the savage actions of the Japanese. He was arrested immediately by the Gestapo.
Later he was released on condition that he "would not say anything more about the Nanjing Massacre."
Rabe sheltered more than 600 Chinese civilians in his back yard in the cruelest of times. The neutral zone presided over by him protected more than 200,000 Chinese refugees. (CD News)