Denmark honourssaviour of Chinese during Nanjing Massacre
Posted August 31, 2019 5:20 am.
HELSINKI — Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II has unveiled a statue of a Dane who is credited with rescuing thousands of Chinese people in December 1937 when Imperial Japanese troops invaded Nanjing, the capital of China at the time.
The three-meter (10-foot) bronze statue of Bernhard Arp Sindberg was revealed at a park in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city, where he was born in 1911.
Sindberg worked in Nanjing for a Danish cement company, F.L. Smidth, as a security guard. He turned the factory into a refugee camp and a shelter for Chinese people during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Danish historians estimate Sindberg’s actions saved some 6,000-10,000 Chinese lives, while Chinese authorities credit him with rescuing up to 20,000 people during a rampage by the Japanese military that later became known as the Nanjing Massacre.
The Associated Press
