"...shows that sometimes the most unlikely of people become the most heroic." — Asian Review of Books
In December 1937, the Chinese capital, Nanjing, falls and the Japanese army unleash an orgy of torture, murder, and rape. Over the course of six weeks, hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war are killed. At the very onset of the atrocities, the Danish supervisor at a cement plant just outside the city, 26-year-old Bernhard Arp Sindberg, opens the factory gates and welcomes in 10,000 Chinese civilians to safety, beyond the reach of the blood-thirsty Japanese. He becomes an Asian equivalent of Oskar Schindler, the savior of Jews in the European Holocaust.
This biography follows Sindberg from his childhood in the old Viking city of Aarhus and on his first adventures as a sailor and a Foreign Legionnaire to the dramatic 104 days as a rescuer of thousands of helpless men, women, and children in the darkest hour of the Sino-Japanese War. It describes how after his remarkable achievement, he receded back into obscurity, spending decades more at sea and becoming a naturalized American citizen, before dying of old age in Los Angeles in 1983, completely unrecognized. In this respect, too, there is an obvious parallel with Schindler, who only attained posthumous fame.
The book sets the record straight by providing the first complete account of Sindberg’s life in English, based on archival sources hitherto unutilized by any historian as well as interviews with surviving relatives. What emerges is the surprising tale of a person who was average in every respect but rose to the occasion when faced with unimaginable brutality, discovering an inner strength and courage that transformed him into one of the great humanitarian figures of the 20th century and an inspiration for our modern age, demonstrating that the determined actions of one person—any person—can make a huge difference.
Introduction
Chapter 1: From the Foreign Legion to Shanghai (1911–1933)
Chapter 2: The Prisoner on the Falstria (1934–1937)
Chapter 3: ‘A Stupid Nincompoop’ (March–August 1937)
Chapter 4: Death in the Streets (August–September 1937)
Chapter 5: ’My Friend Sindbad’ (September–November 1937)
Chapter 6: A Capital City at War (November 1937)
Chapter 7: A Very Dangerous Job (November 30–December 1, 1937)
Chapter 8: Journey to the Heart of Darkness (December 2–5, 1937)
Chapter 9: The Fall of Nanjing (December 6–12, 1937)
Chapter 10: The Massacre Begins (December 13–15, 1937)
Chapter 11: ‘Blood, Blood, and Yet More Blood’ (December 16–19, 1937)
Chapter 12: Christmas in Hell (December 20–27, 1937)
Chapter 13: The Man with the Flag (December 28, 1937–January 13, 1938)
Chapter 14: Friendships (January 14–February 3, 1938)
Chapter 15: The New Order (February 4–20, 1938)
Chapter 16: Troublemaker (February 21–March 15, 1938)
Chapter 17: Guenther’s Letter (March 16–April 25, 1938)
Chapter 18: After Nanjing (April 1938–March 1983)
Afterword: Sindberg’s 104 Days
Peter Harmsen, PhD, is the author of Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze and Nanjing 1937: Battle for a Doomed City, as well as the War in the Far East trilogy. He studied history at National Taiwan University and has been a foreign correspondent in East Asia for more than two decades. He has focused mainly on the Chinese-speaking societies but has reported from nearly every corner of the region, including Mongolia and North Korea. His books have been translated into Chinese, Danish and Romanian.
