Professor Wilhelmina "Minnie" Vautrin
- – Former president of Ginling College, University of Nanking
- – Turned the college into a refugee center
- – Saved hundreds of women and children during the Rape of Nanking
- – Personally confronted Imperial Japanese soldiers
- – Posthumously awarded China’s Emblem of the Blue Jade
During the Nanking Massacre, American Professor Minnie Vautrin of Ginling College helped save hundreds of people from rape and sexual assault by turning her college into a refuge. She hid vulnerable people and confronted Japanese soldiers, refusing to be cowered by their threats and demands. Born in Illinois, she earned a master’s degree in education from Columbia University and taught for almost three decades in China. After Japan conquered Nanking, she was forced to return to the United States. She would commit suicide in 1941, tormented by the memories of what she went through under the Japanese and her inability to return to China and help the innocent people she knew were suffering.
Bryan Mark Rigg, PHD
AUTHOR OF FLAMETHROWER: IWO JIMA MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENT AND U.S. MARINE WOODY WILLIAMS AND HIS CONTROVERSIAL AWARD, JAPAN’S HOLOCAUST AND THE PACIFIC WAR (FIDELIS HISTORIA PRESS, 2020)
