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John H. D. Rabe’s story presents a paradox. He is remembered as a great humanitarian despite remaining a loyal member of the Nazi Party. Born in 1882 in Hamburg, Germany, Rabe first came to Shanghai in 1908. He began working for the Chinese branch of the Siemens Company in 1911 and 20 years later in 1931 transferred to Nanjing and served as director of the Siemens branch office with his wife and two children. Siemens was largely responsible for building the Nanjing telephone lines and supplying turbines for the electrical plant and equipment for the city’s hospitals.

Consider how nations around the world responded to the Jewish refugee crisis created by Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria.

James Lusk, a white man from Alabama, abandoned the Republican Party in 1874. He gave this explanation to a former political associate, noting that "no white man can live in the South in the future and act with any other than the Democratic party unless he is willing and prepared to live a life of social isolation and remain in political oblivion...the die is cast."

Between 1940 and 1941, American diplomat Hiram Bingham IV, stationed in Marseille, France, helped as many as 2,500 Jews escape Nazi persecution by defying United States policies and issuing hundreds of immigration papers.

Turkish ambassador to Rhodes, Selahattin Ülkümen used a tenuous alliance, knowledge of Turkish law, and his skill at negotiating to protect and ultimately rescue some of the Jews on this small island.