The Runner Who Became a Lamp in Weihsien

Eric Liddell could have stayed famous. After winning gold in the 400 meters at the 1924 Paris Olympics — a story later immortalized in Chariots of Fire — he had every reason to bask in the spotlight back in Scotland. Instead, he returned to northern China as a missionary teacher, the same country where he had been born to missionary parents in Tianjin.

When Japan occupied the region during World War II, Liddell was interned at the Weihsien camp in Shandong Province. Seventeen hundred civilians crowded into a compound meant for far fewer. Rations were thin. Morale thinner.

Liddell organized games for restless children, tutored teenagers in science and math, carried coal for elderly prisoners who could not manage it themselves, and gave up his own meager portions for the sick. Fellow internees later recalled that he never preached at anyone. He simply lived in a way that made the darkness visible by contrast.

He died of a brain tumor in that camp on February 21, 1945, five months before liberation. A fellow prisoner wrote: "He made righteousness something you could see."