`SCHINDLER OF CHINA' HAILED AS A HERO.

Byline: Catherine Crocker Associated Press 

A Nazi loyalist has emerged as an unlikely hero of the Rape of Nanking in 1937-38, detailing in a newly discovered diary how he saved thousands of Chinese from Japanese invaders.

John Rabe, a German businessman living at the time in China, recorded the terror of those two months of murder, rape and pillage, and his efforts to help the Chinese, in his 1,200-page journal, which was made public Thursday.

``He didn't think he was a hero,'' said his granddaughter, Ursula Rheinhardt. ``He thought it was his duty as a human being to save people that had been good to him.''

Rabe died in Germany in 1950. Iris Chang, an American author who unearthed the diary while researching a book on the massacre, likened him to Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who protected Jews during World War II.

``I refer to him as the Oskar Schindler of China,'' she said.

Rabe's diary details how he stopped the rape of a Chinese girl by a Japanese soldier. He tells about his efforts to deliver rice to the starving people in the war-torn city. He describes how he sheltered 650 Chinese in foxholes in the back yard of his home. And he tells how he repelled Japanese troops who tried to enter his property.

``These escapades were quite dangerous,'' Rabe wrote. ``The Japanese had pistols and bayonets and I . . . had only party symbols and my swastika armband.''

Some Japanese have insisted the massacre never took place. But the facts are well-established, said William Kirby, a professor of modern Chinese history at Harvard University.

``The Japanese came in and sacked the city, and pillaged it and raped at least 20,000 women, killed at least 50,000 people,'' he said. ``What has never been available like this is the detail and the sense of the day-by-day progression of it.''

Such as one entry, dated Jan. 1, 1938: ``I saw a Japanese soldier lying completely naked on a young girl, who was crying hysterically. I yelled at this swine, in any language it would be understood, `Happy New Year,' and he fled from there, naked and with his pants in his hand.''

Kirby expects the diary to spark a new round of research into the Rape of Nanking and prompt criticism about why Japan has not confronted its responsibility. It will, he said, ``make even larger this kind of open festering sore in Chinese-Japanese relations.''

Rabe was born in Hamburg in 1882. He lived and worked in China almost continuously from 1908 to 1938. He was Siemens Co.'s top representative there, selling telephones, turbines and electrical equipment.

When Japanese forces entered Nanking, Rabe became chairman of a group of foreigners who established a neutral zone as a haven for hundreds of thousand Chinese refugees.

``He wanted to protect his employees,'' Rheinhardt said. Also, ``he said the Chinese had always treated him well and he felt a deep thankfulness.''

When he returned to Germany in 1938, Rabe wrote Adolf Hitler to try to stop the atrocities. The response was arrest and three days of questioning by the Gestapo, which ordered him to keep quiet.

As a party member, Rabe had to undergo de-Nazification by the Allies after World War II in order to hold a job.

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Photo

Photo: Ursula Reinhardt holds a picture of her grandfather John Rabe, who sheltered thousands of Chinese when Japan invaded in 1937-38.

Associated Press