A modern drama The Diaries of John Rabe made debut at the Jiangsu Grand Theatre Wednesday evening as part of the observance for the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre and the 4th National Memorial Day for the Nanjing Massacre victims.
The modern drama is adapted from The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe, a collection of the personal journals of John Rabe, a German businessman who lived in Nanjing at the time of the Nanking Massacre in 1937–1938.
From the two dimensions of the national disaster and the stories of the human nature, the drama makes an artistic reappearance and reflection on the Holocaust in human civilization.
The audience included the descendants of John Rabe, John Magee and other westerners who sheltered Chinese refugees during the Nanjing Massacre.
The descendants of Bernhard Arp Sindberg and Carl Gunter were given the Zijin Grass International Commemorative Medal of Peace when the show was over. Sindberg and Gunter were best known for the establishment of a makeshift refugee camp in the outskirts of Nanjing during the first six weeks of Japanese occupation of the city. The refugee camp sheltered more than 200000 Chinese refugees.
John Rabe was a German businessman and Nazi Party member who is best known for his efforts to stop the atrocities of the Japanese army during the Nanking Occupation and his work to protect and help the Chinese civilians during the event. The Nanking Safety Zone, which he helped to establish, sheltered approximately 200,000 Chinese people from slaughter during the massacre.
The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe contains the diaries that Rabe kept during the Nanking Massacre, writing from his personal experience and observation of the events that took place. Rabe's diaries were made known and quoted by author Iris Chang during the research for her book, The Rape of Nanking. They were subsequently translated from German to English by John E. Woods and published in the United States in 1998.
