Resistance
In besieged Nanking, the only semi-effective resistance was non-violent resistance. In the midst of the massacre, a small band of Americans and Europeans risked their lives to defy the Japanese invaders and rescue as many Chinese refugees as they could from almost certain extermination. These men and women were the creators of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. Approximately two dozen in all, these foreigners worked together to turn a region in the western part of the city into a neutral zone where Chinese civilians could take shelter. What started as a small refugee camp ultimately became the only safe haven for hundreds of thousands of Chinese men, women, and children. These few committee members performed countless valiant deeds throughout the siege, each proving their heroism and earning them the reverence of many Chinese who would have died violent deaths without their intervention.
American Robert Wilson is one such hero. As the only surgeon left in Nanking during the massacre, Wilson toiled day and night, hardly resting, to save the lives of as many injured civilians as he can. He successfully performed surgeries on people who were inches from death, and did so without any pay or reward whatsoever. For the rest of his life, Wilson suffered both physically and mentally for his selflessness, but the people whose lives he saved remember him only as the strongest of men. These survivors speak of Robert Wilson with the utmost reverence, as he was the messiah that delivered them from Hell itself.
The most unlikely savior of Nanking was John Rabe, a German businessman - and leader of the Nazi Party in Nanking. As a leading member of a nation that was allied with Japan, Rabe commanded more fear and respect from the Japanese than any other member of the committee. Upon seeing his swastika armband, the Japanese troops realized that they could not risk killing Rabe, and this immunity gave him the authority he needed to become one of the greatest heroes Nanking had ever seen. Rabe personally drove around the city in his car, rescuing refugees and bringing them back to the Safety Zone, and forcibly pulled Japanese soldiers off of the women they were attempting to rape. He turned his property into a refugee shelter, and regularly chased off Japanese troops attempting to kidnap refugees by climbing over his fence. Rabe even went so far as to write letters to Hitler and the other heads of the Nazi Party in Germany, appealing to them to confront Japan about its savagery. Known to many as "the Nazi Savior of Nanking," John Rabe has secured a place within history as a hero to the Chinese people.