Remembering 'Nanjing's Schindler'

A special yellow rose that was planted by Denmark's Queen Margrethe II at the peace tree in Nanjing last year. The rose is named the "Nanjing Forever - Sindberg Rose" after Bernhard Arp Sindberg, a Danish national who saved 20,000 people during the Nanjing Massacre of 1937-38. [Photo by Li Xiang / Xinhua]

As China celebrates the 70th anniversary of victory over Japan, tributes are being paid to an idealistic young foreigner who helped to save 20,000 people in the face of one of the worst atrocities committed during eight years of brutal occupation. Wang Xin and Cang Wei report from Nanjing.

Without a silver dollar and some rice donated by a young Danish national, Su Guobao and his family wouldn't have survived the winter of 1937.

Although the weather was bitterly cold, the climate was the least of people's worries. The Japanese captured Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, on Dec 13 and immediately embarked on a six-week massacre in which 300,000 soldiers and civilians were slaughtered and thousands of women were raped, according to Chinese historical documents.

Cement stronghold

Su, who was 10 at the time, lived in Hushan, a village in Tangshan township. He and three members of his family fled to a makeshift refugee camp at the Jiangnan Cement Factory in the Qixia district of the city. How-ever, only three of them made it to the camp because Su's younger brother was killed by Japanese soldiers as the family made its way across town.

"Mr Sindberg asked me to work at the cement factory. He gave me a silver dollar and 9 kilograms of rice and said he would send me to school. I just wanted to survive, and I refused his offer (of education) because it never occurred to me that one day I could go to school. I'll always be grateful to him and his colleagues," said Su, who is now 88.

In 107 days straddling 1937 and 1938, Bernhard Arp Sindberg, a 26-year-old Danish laborer, and his colleagues saved about 20,000 Chinese people from the Japanese troops rampaging through the city.

When he first arrived in China, Sindberg worked as a receptionist at the Cathay Hotel in Shanghai, but was fired because of his foul temper. The same thing happened when he worked for a Danish-owned milk producer. However, Sindberg managed to secure a job with Nielsen & Winther, a Danish armaments and aircraft manufacturer, demonstrating the company's weapons to the Nationalist government in Nanjing, which was China's wartime capital until the final months of 1937. Later, he worked as a driver and assistant for a foreign war correspondent who was killed by the Japanese in November 1937.

After attending the correspondent's funeral, Sindberg moved to Nanjing and secured a job as watchman at the Jiangnan Cement Factory - China's biggest cement facility, which used modern techniques and equipment imported from Denmark and Germany - where he was tasked with protecting equipment owned by F.L. Smidth, a Danish engineering company.

According to Dai Yuanzhi, a former journalist who has spent more than 10 years researching the history of the cement factory refugee camp, Sindberg, a German colleague called Karl Gunther and other expatriate workers established the camp in December 1937.

"They not only helped civilians, but also rescued injured Chinese soldiers," Dai said. "To prevent Japanese soldiers from entering the camp, they surrounded the factory with the Danish and German national flags."

As a further safety measure, a sign was hung on the factory's front door that read "Danish-German Joint Venture, Jiangnan Cement Factory", and a giant Danish flag, of about 1,350 square meters, was painted on the roof.