I run into this article to introduce this new film 'Good Nazi of Nanjing' on BBC web site. It is Chinese version of Schindler's List. He was a Germany businessman happening to be in Nanjing during the notorious Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese Invaders. He witnessed the atrocities and cruelty of Japanese army and told himself that a man can not be silent about this kind of cruelty even though he was a Nazi member. Actually he used his Nazi party membership to save hundreds and maybe thousands of Chinese lives while estimated two hundred thousand Chinese civilians were slaughtered during a short two weeks in this ancient city during the World War Two. John Rabe is this extraordinary German whose humanity will be remembered by Chinese forever. Please click this link to read the article.
My parents' generation experienced this painful humiliation and hardship when they grew up during Japanese occupation. My generation only learned from movies and told as stories by grandparents in the neighborhood. Meanwhile we found how advanced Japanese was when I had my very first tape player and recorder made in Japan. I love a great deal of Japanese Culture and its aesthetics reinvented to great extent from Chinese Culture. However in the contrary to what Germany treats its shameful history, still a portion of Japanese tries everything to deny or minimize that dark history. They tried to rewrite and make up that history and hope that shameful history will be totally erased from the younger generations.
What makes me sadder and even angry are what I run into here. When I worked for a consortium a quite while ago, my boss who comes from Austria is very nice guy and is a great friend of mine. One time when we touched this topic, he just laughed and said something I still vividly remember. That is "come on, Chinese need get over with it". It happened again later to my Mexican American co-worker. The reaction is so amazingly the same. I still wonder what they would react if German chancellor had paid visit to Nazi's cemetery as Japanese prime ministers repeatedly visited this shrine that buries a dozen of Japanese top war criminals of World War Two. Move forward only when history is told as what it was
At the end, I would like to pay tribute to Iris Chang who finally awakes the Western world with one of the great atrocities of world history- Rape of Nanking.
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History can only be buried when the people are complicit and silent about it. Thanks for writing about this mister, you have done your part by NOT being silent. And this film i suspect will go a long way. I hope this film comes to Athens.
The sad thing is that too much time has passed now to bring those who committed the atrocities to justice. It's too bad the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal was not an authentic process, like the Nuremberg Trials.
We should get the Iris Chang book... I can't believe she is the same author of the Tsein book i read a long time ago.
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