Wilhelmina "Minnie" Vautrin

(September 27-1886 - May 14, 1941)

Local resident; Christian missionary to China

Wilhelmina "Minnie" Vautrin was born in 1886 in the small community of Secor, Illinois (located just east of Eureka). She was raised within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and eventually decided to dedicate her life to missionary work. In 1919 she moved to China to work with the United Christian Missionary Association. She would spend the remainder of her life working as an educator/missionary in China.

Minnie Vautrin is considered by many to be one of the most heroic figures of the Second World War. In 1937 she was serving as the Chair of the Department of Education at Gingling College in the city of Nanking, China, when Japanese forces attacked the city during the Sino-Japanese War. When Japanese forces arrived in the region in December 1937, the so-called "Rape of Nanking" began in earnest. It is estimated that 300,000 civilian residents of Nanking were killed in this assault, and as many as 80,000 rapes were perpetrated against the city's women and girls.

Vautrin led a group of twenty foreign nationals living in China who established the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. Vautrin courageously opened the gates to her school to allow civilians to enter the campus - declaring it a self-designated safe zone, and in so doing, she was personally responsible for saving the lives of 10,000 women and children. The Chinese government later awarded her "The Emblem of the Blue Jade," its highest honor, and to this day the elderly population of Nanking still refers to Minnie Vautrin as "The Living Goddess of Nanking."

Minnie Vautrin began keeping her diary on August 12, 1937. Shortly after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of July 1937, sustained hostilities began between Japan and China - this event, known as the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), would form a significant part of the events that came to be known as the Second World War. (A microfilm copy of the Vautrin Diary is housed in Melick Library on the Eureka College campus.) April 14, 1940, marked the last entry in the diary. The Vautrin diary has been compared to that of Anne Frank in terms of its poignancy and historical significance.

Vautrin survived the ordeal in Nanking, but she was broken in spirit by the savage experience. She attempted suicide when crossing the ocean while returning to the United States, and she was thus institutionalized for mental fatigue at age fifty-four. She was given electric shock therapy. In May 1941, Vautrin took her own life. That same year, as Woodford County celebrated the centennial of its founding, Minnie Vautrin was recognized as one of the ten most historic figures to be products of the county.

If you would like to learn more about Minnie Vautrin, you might want to consider the following works. Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1998) and American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin (2000) by Hua-Ling Hu both examine Vautrin's remarkable career in greater detail.