If you will care to have a look at Eya and Iceflower's posts above,
I will tell you the inspirational story of a genuine hero.
Summary of article in Billed Bladet #36, 2019.
Written by Trine Larsen.
Recently QMII went to the Aarhus, to the Remabrance Park there, located right in front of Marselisborg.
Here she witnessed the unveiling of a statue of the Dane, Arp Sindberg. The statue is paid for by the Chinese city of Nanjing, where he (among other foreigners) are revered as a national hero each 13th December.
Back during the Japanese-Chinese War, in 1937, the then Chinese capital Nanjing was taken and subjected to a medieval sacking by Japanese troops over a period of several months. It was literally free rape, free plunder, free violence and free killing of Chinese and at least 300.000 were killed and countless women were raped, often repeatedly, as they were force-recruited for bordellos for the soldiers, until worn out or killed. - In fact a high ranking general in the Kwantung Army (the Japanese army in China) gave the advise to his soldiers that if they - enjoyed - Chinese women, they ought to either pay them or kill them afterwards.
It was the opinion of the Japanese general staff in China, that their soldiers deserved "a bit of fun" after a hard fight. So free sacking was the norm in China. And the Chinese were subhumans anyway, and since they hadn't done the honorable thing and killed themselves rather than being conquered they were without honor and as such totally worthless. All that in accordance with the extreme interpretation of the samurai code of Bushido that was prevalent in Japan before and during WWII.
The Chinese to this day are still very bitter over these massacres of which Nanjing was the worst. They are even more bitter, because the current Japanese establishment - media and politicians - have actively downplayed incidents like these. And instead they focus on the heroics of the Japanese soldiers fighting in China.
When the Japanese closed in on Nanjing, the relatively few foreigners there, mostly left. A few remained though in various functions, as representatives of major foreign businesses and overseers for businesses.
Their panic-stricken Chinese employees eventually trickled into the premises of these foreign businesses - with their families. And told horror story after horror story of what happened in the city where the Japanese general staff gradually lost control of their solders and officers on battalion level and down. If the foreigners were in doubt, they needed just look out the windows or venture outside the factory gates to see atrocities first hand.
One such atrocity was at a river. A group of Japanese officers discussed "interesting ways of killing Chinese." They chopped of the arms of a group of Chinese men and threw them into the river...
So a number of foreigners took advantage of the fact that they were foreigners and as such protected from abuse by the Japanese and the Japanese authorities were by no means interested in antagonizing major foreign businesses.
So "employees" found shelters by the tens of thousands on the grounds owned by the foreign companies - in order to keep the place running. And they were - mostly - out of bounds by the Japanese soldiers. And there was some bribery of senior Japanese officers as well.
The risk for the foreigners themselves was of course huge, and foreigners were indeed both subjected to abuse and even killed. And this went on for months.
In the end even these shelters were not safe anymore. In an bizarre way of restoring discipline, the Japanese general staff set up brothels for the soldiers - and officers. But they needed "fresh meat" and the only place left to find young - unspoiled - women by now was in these company-shelters. So hundreds of young women were handed over to the Japanese - or the Japanese would come in and take them...
Eventually this savage sacking of Nanjing fizzled out. The soldiers became numb and sick of the months of rampage and the Kwantung army was to move - and just as importantly, the foreign pres had begun to write accounts of what went on in Nanjing. So in 1938 the nightmare gradually ended.
But back to Bernhard Arp Sindberg.
He joined the Foreign Legion and ended up as an overseer for the large Danish cement company F. L. Smidth and he was directly responsible for tens of thousands of Chinese being saved, finding shelter at the plant outside Nanjing.
After WWII he settled and lived in California, where he also died.
His relatives were present for the unveiling - they did not think the statue resembled Arp Sindberg very much, but it's the honor that matters.
Representatives of the city of Nanjing, QMII and the major of Aarhus gave speeches.
Despite being honored in China, Arp Sindberg, was until today virtually unknown in Denmark. What happened in China in the 1930's was very far away and WWII came just a year later and everyone forgot about China and so was Arp Sindberg.
It's good that he at least got a statue.
