He was born on November 23, 1882, in Hamburg. He spent nearly 30 years of his life in China, working for the Siemens company. In 1934, like many German citizens of that time, he joined the NSDAP. A typical expat, a successful businessman, a loyal citizen of the Third Reich. It would seem his story could have been lost in the archives as just another biography of an ordinary party functionary.

However, in 1937, when the Japanese army invaded Nanking, something awakened in Rabe that Nazi ideology tried to root out of a person—compassion. While other foreigners hastily left the city, Rabe decided to stay. Together with a group of like-minded individuals, he organized the “Nanking Safety Zone.”

It was here that the most bitter paradox of the war manifested: Rabe used his status as an NSDAP member and the swastika as a shield. He was certain that the Japanese—Germany’s allies—would not dare to bomb an object flying the flag of the Third Reich. He placed swastika flags on the roofs of hospitals and shelters where civilians were hiding. And it worked. Risking his life, Rabe personally stood in the way of Japanese soldiers, preventing massacres, and documented the horrors of the Nanking Massacre, hoping that Hitler would stop his “allies.”

In the Safety Zone, Rabe managed to save between 200,000 and 250,000 Chinese. He shared his last food supplies, nursed the wounded, and literally snatched people from the hands of executioners, appealing to “Aryan dignity” and his party badges.

Upon returning to Germany in 1938, he tried to show the Reich leadership photographs of the atrocities committed by the Japanese. In response, the Gestapo confiscated all his evidence, and Rabe himself was detained for a time. After the war, the paradox reached an absurd level: due to his NSDAP membership, Rabe underwent denazification, was stripped of his livelihood, and was interrogated by both Soviet and British intelligence services.

A hero who saved hundreds of thousands of lives, he died in 1950 in poverty and obscurity. His name was rehabilitated only decades later, when the world learned of his diaries. He is often called the “Oskar Schindler of Nanking”—a man who remained human even while being part of an inhuman system.

Note: The story of John Rabe formed the basis of the biographical drama “John Rabe” (2009), which details his confrontation with the Japanese occupiers.