基本信息出版社：Abacus
页码：399 页
出版日期：2000年03月
ISBN：0349111413
条形码：9780349111414
装帧：平装
正文语种：英语

内容简介 在线阅读本书

In 1937, as the invading Japanese Army closed on Nanking, then the capital of China, all foreigners were ordered to evacuate. One man, a mild 55-year-old German named John Rabe who ran the local Siemens factory, refused on the grounds that it would show a bad example to his Chinese workers. Sending his wife and family to safety, he watched in horror as the Japanese began to wipe out the population. Hastily contacting the tiny remaining community of foreigners, and using the flimsy authority of a pact Hitler had made with the Japanese, Rabe spent months safeguarding and providing refuge for thousands of Chinese, often interposing himself physically between the executioners and their victims. It is estimated that he saved between 250,000 and 300,000 lives by his efforts. And every night, he would write up his diary of these extraordinary events. THE GOOD GERMAN OF NANKING is Rabe's story, in his own words: the amazing testament to one of the hitherto unsung heroes of the twentieth century.
作者简介 John Rabe was born in Hamburg in 1882, and died in Berlin in 1949.
编辑推荐 Amazon.co.uk Review
In November 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army took Nanking (Nanjing), the capital of China and home to 1.3 million people, and began an orgy of murder, rape, and looting. By the time discipline was restored two months later, hundreds of thousands of Chinese were dead with hundreds of thousands more homeless, starving, and traumatised. The "Rape of Nanking" still causes international controversy, as Japanese politicians refuse to unequivocally apologise to China and school textbooks continue to misrepresent the events.

Like Oskar Schindler of Schindler's List, John Rabe was an enterprising and fundamentally decent German businessman caught up in war. Head of the Nanjing branch of Seimens, the German electronics firm, he had lived and worked in China for almost 30 years. Rather than flee from the threatened city, he stayed to organise a Safety Zone as refuge of last resort for Chinese civilians. The Good German of Nanking is his firsthand description of the terrible events and his ultimate success in saving perhaps a quarter of a million lives. The diary format provides a forum for the extraordinary power and immediacy of John Rabe's words, including his gallows humour, placing the reader there in Nanking as the bombs explode and the Japanese soldiers begin their pointless massacres. Rabe's trials were not over when he returned to wartime Germany; diary entries that he wrote during the occupation of Berlin by the Soviet army form a fascinating coda to this book. --John Stevenson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
'A story of wondrous humanity in the face of insane savagery' SPECTATOR 'A testament of truly remarkable fortitude and charity by one man ... it restores faith in humanity' TLS 'He out-Schindlered Schindler ... His unbelievable tenacity, courage and ingenuity make him the most unexpected unsung hero of modern times' EVENING STANDARD 'This is an important contribution to our understanding of those years.' SUNDAY TIMES 'His story is a significant document.' THE TIMES 'In November 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army took Nanking (Nanjing), the capital of China and home to 1.3 million people, and began an orgy of murder, rape, and looting. By the time discipline was restored two months later, hundreds of thousands of Chinese were dead with hundreds of thousands more homeless, starving, and traumatised. The "Rape of Nanking" still causes international controversy, as Japanese politicians refuse to unequivocally apologise to China and school textbooks continue to misrepresent the events. Like Oskar Schindler of Schindler's List, John Rabe was an enterprising and fundamentally decent German businessman caught up in war. Head of the Nanjing branch of Seimens, the German electronics firm, he had lived and worked in China for almost 30 years. Rather than flee from the threatened city, he stayed to organise a Safety Zone as refuge of last resort for Chinese civilians. The Good German of Nanking is his firsthand description of the terrible events and his ultimate success in saving perhaps a quarter of a million lives. The diary format provides a forum for the extraordinary power and immediacy of John Rabe's words, including his gallows humour, placing the reader there in Nanking as the bombs explode and the Japanese soldiers begin their pointless massacres. Rabe's trials were not over when he returned to wartime Germany; diary entries that he wrote during the occupation of Berlin by the Soviet army form a fascinating coda to this book.' - John Stevenson, AMAZON.CO.UK Review

TLS
'A testament of truly remarkable fortitude and charity by one man ... it restores faith in humanity'

EVENING STANDARD
'He outSchindlered Schindler ... His unbelievable tenacity, courage and ingenuity make him the most unexpected unsung hero of modern times'