Endurance and Heroism in the 20th Century

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” -Viktor E. Frankl

Shackleton’s Voyage (1914)

Five days after the start of World War I, Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27 men (and 50 dogs) set out from England in order to attempt to cross Antarctica from sea to sea. The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition sought to be the first group to ever complete this journey. The aptly named Endurance and its crew left harbor in South Georgia on December 5th 1914. They were about to face unimaginable hardships.

A month into the voyage, the Endurance became frozen in the Antarctic waters. By February 24 1915 Shackleton realized the ship would be trapped until the following spring and so he ordered the conversion of the ship into a winter station. The ship drifted in the ice for over seven months. In late September the ice began putting extreme pressure on the ship and on October 24 1915 water began pouring in. Shackleton was forced to give the orders to abandon ship.

The crew rescued what equipment and provisions they could and moved camp onto the uninhabited moving ice. The men and hunted penguins and seals. As the weeks dragged on supplies began to run low until daily rations were a biscuit and three lumps of sugar. To make matters worse, the piece of ice that the crew camped on was beginning to break. Shackleton commanded his crew to shoot the remaining dogs for food. On April 9 1916 the ice broke in two and the men got into their three lifeboats.

The men paddled in freezing cold water toward Elephant Island—which was 346 miles from where the Endurance sank. The crew was constantly cold and wet in the 22 degree weather. They went days without food and their mouths and tongues became so swollen that they couldn’t swallow food even if they tried. After five brutal days they finally made it to Elephant Island. It was their first time on solid ground in 497 days.

Rescue was an impossibility on an uninhabited island in the Antarctic. Shackleton knew that he alone was in charge of saving his men and at some point their rations would run out completely.

Shackleton decided to attempt to reach South Georgia Island with five of his men. The island was 800 miles to the north east. They chose the biggest lifeboat—a 23 foot open boat—and set sail on April 24th. Reaching the whaling station at South Georgia Island was a long shot, but it was their only hope of rescue.

After three days at sea, the lifeboat was battered by hurricane-like waves. They were always freezing and wet—something they had grown used to. Finally, after 16 days they reached the shore of South Georgia Island. Unfortunately they landed on an unoccupied shore—the shore on the opposite side opposite of the whaling station.

With the boat broken and three men too sick to go on, Shackleton would have to cross the island with just two of his men and a 50 foot piece of rope. The three men set off to cross mountains never before crossed. A few hours in they reached the peak of a mountain. Unable to see more than a couple feet below them because of a heavy mist, the three men held on to each other and pushed off into the unknown abyss—all the way down the 1000 foot mountain side. Miraculously they survived and continued on. After 36 hours they reached the whaling station.

About their journey across the island, British explorer Duncan Carse said ” I do not know how they did it, except that they had to—three men of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration with 50 feet of rope between them”. Duncan would be the next person to cross the island—in 1955.

Once Shackleton reached the whaling station he immediately sent for a boat to pick up the crew on Elephant Island. His first three attempts at rescue were foiled by sea ice but on August 30 1916 Shackleton reached Elephant Island and rescued all 22 men.

Thanks to Shackleton’s leadership, not a single crew member died.

The Good Nazi of Nanking (1937)

John Rabe was a Nazi party member who worked in China during the attack on Nanking in 1937. He had worked for Siemens China Corporation for over 30 years, and when the Japanese overtook the city in December he was one of only 22 foreigners that decided to stay. All of the other westerners left.

Weeks earlier, while the Japanese were advancing towards Nanking, Rabe helped to create the Nanking Safety Zone. The purpose of the zone was to provide Chinese refugees with shelter and food. Rabe was elected leader of the committee that would oversee the Safety Zone, in part because of his status as a local head of the Nazi party. A year earlier Japan and Germany signed an anti-communist pact.

Japanese embassy officials met with Rabe and strongly urged him to leave the city—Rabe refused. He felt responsible for the safety of his employees and for the city that had treated him so kindly.

As the Japanese soldiers ravaged the city, women and children banged on the gates of the Safety Zone begging for entrance. The zone quickly filled up with Chinese civilians. Rabe opened up his properties in order to house 650 more refugees; he turned his house and offices into sanctuaries for hundreds of women, allowing them to take shelter in his backyard.

As the days went on, stories and sounds of rape became unbearable to Rabe’s conscience. He felt is was necessary for him to go out and do something about it. With nothing but his Nazi uniform and swastika armband, John Rabe roamed the city to prevent atrocities. Men would inevitably run to him and beg him to stop a rape in progress. Rabe would chase the Japanese soldiers away and take the woman back to the Safety Zone.

Rabe was aware of the risk he was taking. In his diary he wrote ” The Japanese had pistols and bayonets and I had only party symbols and my swastika armband”. Despite the risk, Rabe went out day after day preventing rapes. At night Japanese soldiers would attempt to scale the wall by his yard to take women from the Safety Zone. Rabe would chase them away unarmed.

A member of the Nanking Safety Zone Committee wrote, “when any of them objects, Rabe thrusts his armband in their face and points to his Nazi decoration, the highest in the country, and asks them if they know what it means. It always works!”.

The Chinese refugees revered John Rabe. He tried to keep their spirits alive by hosting birthday celebrations for the children. Typically when a boy was born in the safety zone, he was given the name “John”.

John Rabe helped to shelter and save the lives of approximately 200,000 Chinese civilians.

The twentieth century was filled with human evil. Darkness seemed to pour out of the collective human heart in every corner of the world. In spite of this, there were always individuals who took on the weight of the suffering around them and moved uphill courageously. Many heroic men and women simply endured nobly and acted morally in the face of tragedy and depravity. I say “simply” but it is far from a simple task. When the world seems enveloped by darkness, we have only these individuals to light the way and to illuminate hope.

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“The person whose life has meaning is the one who, instead of remaining complacently in the midst of his regrets, decides to strive for perfection, however imperfectly, to express the absolute, even through his own deficiencies, to seek eternity, even if only temporarily. If he spends his life making peace in society or rendering justice to victims, he is effectively pointing, even if it is with a trembling finger, to the existence of peace or justice as such. If he spends his life raising his children, that is, in teaching them a way of life, it is because he thinks that his way of life is worthy of immortality, that it deserves to be perpetuated because it brings happiness.” -Chantal Delsol