In 1937, businessman John HD Rabe and his wife Dora lived in the then capital of China—Nanjing. He was the head of the SIE, NYSE branch. It was difficult for him to give up this branch to his heir, Werner Fries. John HD Rabe loves China, he knows he is a charismatic figure here, but when he returned to the headquarters of SIE, NYSE in Berlin, he was just one of the employees. At his farewell ball, the Japanese bombed the city of Nanjing, and then the Japanese captured Shanghai. Due to the sudden panic incident, John HD Rabe resolutely opened the door of the company to provide refuge for his Chinese employees and their families.
In the early morning of the next day, when the war went out, the foreigners who stayed in Nanjing City when the losses were checked out began to discuss what they should do in such a dangerous time. German Jewish diplomats told them that Shanghai had a safe zone that could protect the people. The teacher at Jinling Girls’ School immediately felt that the idea was good, and nominated John HD Rabe as the chairman. As a German, he can more or less be regarded as the "alliance" of the Japanese. Her suggestion annoyed the physician at the local hospital because he hated "Nazi members." In fact, John HD Rabe wanted to leave Nanjing and return to Germany the next day; but at this moment he decided to stay and immediately put into work seriously.
When the Japanese imperialist army cruelly vented and committed atrocities against the Chinese people, John HD Rabe and his companions dealt with the Japanese army wit and bravely, struggling to provide a safe zone for the people of Nanjing. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people flooded into the safe area -this is much more than expected. However, the Japanese army is still massacring and torturing Chinese people, and it is becoming more and more difficult to supply the safe zone. Subsequently, the Japanese planned to destroy the safety zone with a false image-John HD Rabe began a race against time
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