NANJING: As one of the first major events of the three-year-long "Germany and China - Moving Ahead Together" campaign, a charitable fund was established here yesterday in the capital of East China's Jiangsu Province.
The John Rabe House Development Fund is jointly sponsored by the Nanjing city government, Nanjing University, the Consulate General of Germany in Shanghai, Siemens China, Jiangsu BS Home Appliances Sales Co Ltd and BASF-YPC Co Ltd.
It will seek to generate funds to support the John Rabe and International Safety Zone Memorial Hall, and John Rabe International Research and Exchange Center for Peace and Reconciliation.
Xu Huiling, vice-mayor of Nanjing, said at the agreement signing ceremony: "The fund will help showcase the spirit of internationalism and humanism of John Rabe to the world and to show Chinese and German people's commemoration of and respect for the heroes."
John Rabe (1882-1950) was born in Hamburg, Germany and moved to China in 1908. He worked in Beijing, Tianjin and other cities before moving to Nanjing in 1931 where he worked as a business representative for Siemens.
In December 1937, he, together with other foreign friends, set up the Nanjing International Safety Zone Committee, which saved hundreds of thousands of local residents in one month during the Nanjing Massacre, when Japanese soldiers ravaged the city and killed more than 300,000 people.
In his own house alone, Rabe sheltered thousands of Chinese refugees and protected them from being killed.
The fund has been set up to realize the house's function as a platform for cultural exchanges and to cover its daily operational and management costs, Xu said.
It is a sign of the strong commitment from Sino-German parties in the fields of cultural exchange, education and research on international relations and peace, he said.
Klaus Wucherer, an executive with Siemens, said: "The Memorial Hall and Research Center will help foster good Sino-German relations through academic research and international exchanges."
Although the size of the fund was not disclosed, the benefactors previously contributed 3 million yuan ($400,000) to pay for renovation work on the house, which reopened in October 2006.
Source: China Daily
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