Rape Of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II By Iris Chang

I first read ‘The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II’ by Iris Chang while in high school. My previous knowledge of what had happened during the Sino-Japanese war was related to stories I had been told by my mother about her father. My grandfather has been born in Hunan province in China between 1928 and 1933 (at the time, China lacked a widespread birth certificate system in rural areas at the time). The Japanese invasion of Hunan province occurred toward the end of World War two in 1945 when my grandfather was in his early teens. Family stories that I have heard of that time involve echoe the perverse tortures, the extreme violence and the disregard for Chinese lives by the Imperial Japanese Army that characterized

Chang’s retelling of the violence used by Japanese soldiers through the use of interviews of victims and extremely graphic pictures. Interviews with comfort women and other survivors from the event detail the uncurtailed violence that the Japanese Imperial Army used against the Nanking residents. The use of pictures throw the reader right into the event - an event of such brutality that it is hard to interpret through words alone. The ambiguous figure of John Rabe particularly stood out to me when reading the book. A staunch supporter of Hitler and Nazism, John Rabe established the Nanking safety Zone, sheltering chinese residents, particularly women and children from the Japanese army (Chang, 109). Chang’s description of Rabe, donning his swastika armband which gave him an influence over Japanese soldiers than other westerners did not, and saving women from sexual assault is striking (Chang, 115). Rabe was given the nickname “The Living Buddha of Nanking” and he has been credited for saving the lives of 200 000 to 250 000 people (Chang, 109). Rabe’s actions during the Massacre are inspiring and yet through a European lens of the events of World War II would see him very differently. Following the end of the war, Rabe was sent back to Germany and trialed for his association with the Nazi Party (Chang, 193). Unable to find a job, the Rabe family lived in poverty. Nanking citizens who heard about the hardship faced by the man who had saved them just years before gathered funds to send to him and continued to send the Rabe family parcels of food or money (Chang, 193). In Europe, John Rabe appeared as an ominous figure, a staunch supporter of the Third Reich and of the Nazi Party. In China however, John Rabe appears as a savior and protector of the innocent, a man, who unlike many other Westerners, stayed in an assigned city for the sake for the sake of his Chinese