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03/21/2009: "'Good Nazi of Nanjing' sparks debate"

A film about a member of the Nazi party who saved thousands of Chinese during the massacre in Nanjing recently opened in Germany. The BBC's Zoe Murphy looks at the possible impact this unlikely hero's story may have on Sino-Japanese relations.

On Christmas Eve in 1937, German businessman John Rabe visited the mortuary in China's then capital, Nanjing.

He later described in his diary the charred body of a civilian man whose eyes had been gouged out, and a boy of perhaps seven, whose corpse was punctured with bayonet wounds.

"I wanted to see these atrocities with my own eyes, so that I can speak as an eyewitness later," he wrote. "A man cannot be silent about this kind of cruelty!"

The Second Sino-Japanese War was raging.

[ This story has been suppressed in the west because it shows a nazi as a hero who saves non-whites from mass brutality. It doesn't quite fit in with the idea that nazis are the brutal war criminals. ]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7907437.stm