Minnie Vautrin
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Wilhelmina (Minnie) Vautrin (September 27, 1886 – May 16, 1941) was an American missionary renowned for saving the lives of many women at the Ginling Girls College in Nanking, China during the Nanjing Massacre.
Minnie Vautrin was born in Secor, Illinois. She was hard working and spent much of her childhood and teen years earning money to attend college. At 17, she attended Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. She then graduated from the University of Illinois. She began a career in teaching, starting with high school in LeRoy, Illinois.
In 1912, Vautrin made her way to China as a missionary and teacher. During her first few years there she helped found a girls school in Luchowfu. After her first furlough, she returned and helped build and found Ginling Girls College in Nanking, where she eventually took over as Master of Studies.
When the Japanese army invaded Nanking in December 1937, she and the other foreigners in the city, including John Rabe, worked to protect the civilians in the Nanking Safety Zone. Ginling Girls College became a haven of refuge, at times harboring up to 10,000 women in a college designed to support between 200 and 300. With only her wits and the use of an American flag, Vautrin was largely able to repel incursions into her college.
Minnie recounted the horrors of the war in her diary in 1937:
There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today. Thirty girls were taken from language school last night, and today I have heard scores of heartbreaking stories of girls who were taken from their homes last night—one of the girls was but 12 years old. Food, bedding and money have been taken from people. … I suspect every house in the city has been opened, again and yet again, and robbed. Tonight a truck passed in which there were eight or ten girls, and as it passed they called out "Jiu ming! Jiu ming!"—save our lives. The occasional shots that we hear out on the hills, or on the street, make us realize the sad fate of some man—very probably not a soldier.
In 1940, weary and stressed, Vautrin took a furlough again from her work. A few months later, haunted by the images she saw and feeling responsible for not being able to save more lives, Vautrin committed suicide by turning on the stove gas in her small apartment in Indianapolis.
After the war, Vautrin was posthumously awarded the Emblem of the Blue Jade by the Chinese government for her heroic sacrifices during the Nanjing Massacre. Her work saving the lives of Chinese civilians during the massacre is recounted in the biographical book, American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking, written by historian Hua-ling Hu.
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[edit] References
- Chang, Iris, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, foreword by William C. Kirby. Penguin USA, 1998. ISBN 0-14-027744-7 (paperback)
- Hu, Hua-Ling, American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin. Southern Illinois University Press, April 2000. ISBN 0-8093-2303-6
- Secor Centennial Committee, "The Minnie Vautrin Story," in The Secor Centennial Book, 1857–1957, 1957
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[edit] Further reading
Novels about the Nanking Massacre, inspired by or featuring Minnie Vautrin:
- Galbraith, Douglas (2006). A Winter in China.
- Kent, Kevin (2006). Nanking, BookSurge Publishing. "[NANKING][1]" ISBN 1-4196-1602-1
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vautrin, Wilhelmina |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Vautrin, Minnie |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | missionary in China |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 27, 1887 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Secor, Illinois |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 16, 1941 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Indianapolis, Indiana |
