The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe by John Rabe

Author:John Rabe [Rabe, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Non-Fiction, Biography, War, Fiction
ISBN: 9780316847681
Google: LPNpm1xND_YC
Amazon: 0316847682
Goodreads: 10753803
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1998-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

15 JANUARY

As is obvious from the letters that arrived for me yesterday from Shanghai via the German embassy and to which on 14 January I replied to the management of Siemens China Co. in Shanghai, people there have not the vaguest notion of current conditions here.

Memorandum of Chancellor 40 P. Schar fenberg, German Embassy, Nanking Office

Situation in Nanking as of 13 January 1938

There is no telephone, telegraph, or postal service in Nanking, nor are there any buses, taxies, or rickshas. The waterworks are not operating, electric power is to be had only in the embassy buildings, where all windows above the ground floor must be blacked out. The English embassy has no electricity as yet.

There is no traffic in the streets, since the suburbs were burned down almost in their entirety by the Chinese and the center of the city has largely been burned down by the Japanese. No one lives there now. The rest of the population—circa 200,000—is confined to the Safety Zone, formerly a residential area. People vegetate there in various buildings and their adjoining gardens, where up to 600 people live in straw huts, and no one may leave this Zone. The Zone is controlled by sentries.

The streets outside the Zone are deserted, the ruins a desolate sight. Food is dangerously short. Inside the Safety Zone people have been begun to eat horse and dog meat. Hürter managed to get through once again yesterday and was able to procure a pig and a few chickens for us via Dr. Günther at the cement factory in Hsi Sha Shan. (The English embassy was given some, as a thank-you for taking us on board their gunboats.) We cannot buy anything else.

The committee under John Rabe, and which includes several Americans, has done miraculous work. It is not an exaggeration to say that it has saved tens of thousands of lives.

The water problem is also very serious, the water mains are not functioning, and there is no way to wash clothes, since all the ponds are contaminated by the dead bodies that have been thrown into them.

The new city administration, which is supposed to take over duties that are in fact being carried out by the committee, is getting nowhere because of the actions of the Japanese. One of its new members, the well-known auctioneer Jimmy, has at least shown courage and told the Japanese: “If you are against me, then you’d better shoot me here and now!”

It’s best not to say anything about the actions of the Japanese since their arrival; it is all too reminiscent of Genghis Khan: Destroy everything! A first lieutenant on the staff told me that during the march from Shanghai to Nanking, the supply columns never once caught up with the troops, and so it is understandable why soldiers went berserk here, grabbing whatever they could. And I’m quite sure that like the Negroes in 1918 they were promised: If you hold out, you’ll each get a pretty girl in Nanking.41And things have been very, very bad for all the women who remained behind here.

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