“The Forgotten Holocaust”: 27 Tragic Photos From The Rape Of Nanking
Wikimedia CommonsChinese men being forcibly buried alive during the Rape of Nanking, circa 1937-1938.
We often seem to know all about the horrors that have happened on our side of the world. But, all too often, when an atrocity has happened on the other side, we don’t hear much about it.
Alongside all the catastrophes that plagued Europe during World War II, the atrocities committed in Southeast Asia were every bit as disturbing — even if most of us in the West hardly ever learn about them in school.
And few of the atrocities committed in Asia during World War II were as terrible as the Nanking Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking.
In the mere six weeks during which the Japanese perpetrated the Nanking Massacre starting on Dec. 13, 1937, an estimated 20,000-80,000 Chinese women were brutally raped and sexually assaulted by the invading soldiers. They sometimes went door-to-door, dragging out women and even small children and violently gang-raping them. Then, once they’d finished with their victims, they often murdered them.
Such killing wasn’t just as an act of senseless barbarity, either – these men were following orders. “So that we will not have any problems on our hands,” one commander told his men, referring to any women they’ve raped, “either pay them money or kill them in some obscure place after you have finished.”
By the time the worst of the Rape of Nanking had ended, an estimated 300,000 people were dead – mostly within a matter of weeks. When Japanese soldiers and officials were tried and executed for war crimes just after World War II, the court found that at least 200,000 had perished during the Rape of Nanking.
To this day, denials of the atrocities persist despite countless firsthand witnesses from France, the United States, Germany, and Japan. The denials even persist despite photographs like the ones above, which make the truth of the Nanking Massacre disturbingly clear.
