'John Rabe'

I am so happy someone is bringing the story of John Rabe to the silver screen. It's past time that this man gets some recognition for what he did during World War II- and not enough people know the story of what happened in Nanking when the Japanese took the City.

When I was in high school, I took a seminar on the Holocaust and that was depressing enough. The sheer scale of the monstrous crime of the Holocaust was difficult to learn about, difficult to read about- yet important to learn about nonetheless. Some time later, I read Iris Chang's book on the Rape of Nanking and it was the hardest, most horrible thing I have ever read. The Holocaust, I think, horrifies people because of the sheer industrial scale of the horror. The Rape of Nanking was the worst of humanity in one, brutal incident the encapsulates the horror of the Holocaust without the scale of death and destruction. In many ways, I thought the brutality of Nanking was worse than what I had read about the Holocaust.

But John Rabe stayed behind and did what he could to save the people of Nanking- establishing an international safe zone that managed to keep 250,000 civilians free and safe from the horror of what was going on in the rest of Nanking. To this day, he is known as 'The Good Man of Nanking' and remembered and memorialized in China for what he did. Unfortunately, too few people outside of China know his story- and I hope that this movie changes that.

To date, the Japanese have yet to apologize for what happened at Nanking. I hope this movie changes that, as well.