John Rabe (2009)

This is a German, Chinese and French movie about the German, John Rabe, who helped save over 200,000 Chinese when the Japanese attacked and occupied Nanjing in 1937 (also known as the Rape of Nanjing.) Ulrich Tukur plays John Rabe who is considered the Oskar Schindler of Nanjing. Daniel Bruehl plays Dr. Georg Rosen who worked at the German Embassy in China until the Nazis forced him out because he was Jewish and whom also helped Rabe set up the "Safety Zone." While Rabe was a member of the Nazi Party he had lived in China working for a German company (Siemens)  since around the time of the First World War. He was being recalled back to Germany when the Japanese attacked and he decided to stay and help save his workers (first) and then as many of the other Chinese as he could. Rabe was the leader of the International Committee of foreigners (mostly because as a German the Japanese would consider him an ally as Germany and Japan were friends) and still left in Nanjing (after the diplomats, etc fled) that created the Safety Zone and tried to get the Japanese to acknowledge its boundaries and to stop their massacring. What many people do not know is that the Japanese went into Nanjing (and other Chinese cities) with no regard to international law. They murdered innocent men, women and children, they mutilated the bodies (ie chopping off their heads) and they raped girls and women at their leisure. Rabe and his Committee couldn't stop the majority of the Japanese atrocities, but they did manage to save and feed over 200,000 people in their Safety Zone. In the end, the diplomats came back to Nanjing and the Japanese were forced to stop their butchering. The Committee was dissolved and Rabe was forced back to Germany (where he was questioned by the Gestapo and had a rough life both during World War 2 and after it until he died in 1950. His story was not well-known because the Allies refused to de-Natzify him even though he stopped being a Nazi in the 1930s after leaving China (by the way Oskar Schindler was also a member of the Nazi Party from 1939-1945.) It was people like John Rabe, Georg Rosen and other foreigners who willingly stayed in Nanjing when they could have left and helped the Chinese when no one else would. The Rape of Nanjing is one of the many Japanese war crimes that the current Japanese Government and others refuse to admit. We would never stand for a German Government to refuse any of their war crimes and so I do not understand why we allowed, and continue to allow, the Japanese to do the same. This is a good movie about real events that most have never heard of and for that reason alone people need to see it.