The 2019 Purple Grass International Peace Summer Camp, which opened at the Memorial Hall of the Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Invasion of China, invited the descendants of international friends who stayed in Nanjing to rescue refugees regardless of their personal safety during the Nanjing Massacre: the descendant of John Rabe, chairman of the International Committee of the Nanjing Safe Zone, Chris Reinhardt and his daughter; the descendant of the American priest John Magee who took the historical images of the Nanjing Massacre, Rick Magee and his wife, children, Chris Magee and his adopted daughter Steve Brady and his daughter, the descendants of The American doctor Richard Brady who treated refugees at Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital. They have become "messengers of peace" who inherit historical memories and practice peace operations. Cui Xiao, a reporter from the South China News Rong Media
During the Nanjing Massacre, the descendants of international friends who stayed in Nanjing to rescue refugees regardless of their personal safety were searching for the footprints of their families, walking into the history of the Nanjing Massacre, and thinking about the meaning of peace. Cui Xiao, a reporter from the South China News Rong Media
"History, Peace, and the Future: Images of Nanjing by Maji's Grandchildren", John Maggie and grandson Chris Maggie, the grandsons and grandchildren, one shooting destruction, the other shooting rebirth, their lenses record Nanjing, witnessing the history, present and future of Nanjing. This is the story behind the picture that Chris Magee introduced to reporters. Cui Xiao, a reporter from the South China News Rong Media
Show the past, and let the future generations.
On December 13, 1937, the invading Japanese army carried out a terrible massacre in Nanjing, in which 300,000 innocent civilians died under the butcher's knife of the Japanese army during the six-week massacre.
After 84 years of turning the pages of history, the tragic fate of the Chinese nation of being poor and weak and being bullied by others has forever become history, and a strong China has become the backbone of safeguarding world peace.
Forgetting means betrayal, and remembering is not for hatred. Nanjing, who has experienced suffering, knows the preciousness of peace better, and through the relay of countless people, the historical facts of the Nanjing Massacre are spreading across the gap of race, color and language, spreading in a wider range of the world, and the seeds of peace are spread around the world like dandelions.
Today, the national memorial ceremony for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre was held at the Memorial Hall of the Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Army Invading China, and when the poignant sirens and the bells of peace once again echoed over the city, while we remembered our compatriots, the belief in remembering history and cherishing peace will also flow through everyone's hearts over and over again.
Let more people know the truth of history
On November 2 this year, a group of 40 international students from the School of International Education of Hohai University came to the Memorial Hall of the Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Invasion of China to participate in the training and exchange activities of the 59th Purple Grass International Peace School, and rang the Peace Bell in the Public Festival Square. They came from 18 countries, their eyes were focused, and they listened carefully to the explainers. Jhandre Intriago (Chinese Ronaldo) is from Ecuador and is his second visit to the memorial. He said: "Compared with the first time I visited, today I learned a lot of historical truths from the teachers that I didn't know before. This sad moment in history reminds me of how important peace is. Our generation must do our best to protect and spread peace! ”
Nanjing Purple Grass International Peace School is a non-profit public welfare school established by the Memorial Hall to popularize the historical knowledge of the Nanjing Massacre. Since the beginning of the class in 2017, through holding expert lectures, inviting survivors to give testimony on the spot, setting up special training camps, research-based study classes and other forms, college, middle and primary school students from all over the world have conducted in-depth understanding and thinking about this history.
Excavating and studying the history of the Nanjing Massacre, caring for survivors, and spreading the voice of peace to the world, for many years, the Memorial Hall of the Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Invasion of China has been committed to letting more people around the world know the history of the Nanjing Massacre.
Caring for the victims of war and witnesses of history is a respect for the past and a practice of peace. In 2004, the memorial hall established the Nanjing Victims Assistance Association for the Japanese Invasion of China, and over the years, the Association has raised aid funds and mobilized a wide range of social forces to assist survivors in difficulty in life, rescued the oral history of survivors of the Nanjing Massacre, and organized survivors to participate in testimonial gatherings in more than 10 cities such as Japan and the United States.
The memorial hall also led the establishment of the first batch of key high-end think tanks in Jiangsu Province, the Nanjing Academy of Massacre History and International Peace. Based on the study of the history of the Nanjing Massacre, the history of Japan's invasion of China, the history of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the history of Sino-Japanese relations, contemporary Japanese studies, and peace studies, the Institute pays attention to academic research and the collection, collation, judgment and response of cutting-edge dynamic information.
In 2018, the Journal of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Invasion of China was officially launched, which is an academic journal (quarterly) for public distribution at home and abroad. In September of that year, in order to facilitate overseas dissemination, the Study of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Invasion of China was launched in English.
In addition, by holding thematic exhibitions at home and abroad, the memorial hall conveys to the world the concept of Nanjing's cherishing of peace. For example, the memorial hall has brought "Witnessing Together: The Historical Facts of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre" to more than 30 international cities such as San Francisco in the United States, Nagoya in Japan, Florence in Italy, Moscow in Russia, Gonseong in France, Minsk in Belarus, and Prague in the Czech Republic, to promote the international community's understanding of the history of the Nanjing Massacre, and also to convey to the international community the concept of Nanjing remembering history and cherishing peace.
At the memorial, a group of volunteers are active all year round, the Purple Grass Volunteer Service Team, which was established in 1994. Today, there are more than 20,000 registered volunteers and more than one million hours of service.
Every volunteer is a "purple grass gardener" who sows seeds of peace. Among these volunteers, there are survivors and descendants of the Nanjing Massacre, college students who use their spare time to do lectures, civilization guidance, publicity and promotion work, and volunteers from the United States, France, South Korea, Japan and other countries.
Spread the voice of peace to the world
History cannot be tampered with.
Historical materials are the carriers of memory, as well as the link between communication and cognition. In recent years, while collecting and protecting the historical evidence of the Nanjing Massacre and solidifying the oral testimony of survivors, Nanjing has actively promoted the international dissemination of relevant historical facts, so that the truth of the Nanjing Massacre can be revealed, the memory can be solidified, and the historical facts can be inherited.
On March 14, 2016, the photo exhibition "Sons of Hamburg, The Good Man of Nanjing" prepared by the Nanjing Municipal Archives was exhibited in Hamburg, Germany, so that the German and European publics could understand the righteous deeds of Rabe, Gunter, Klegel and others to carry out international humanitarian rescue and protect the lives of many Chinese.
On October 22 of the same year, in Gangcheng, France, a historical exhibition entitled "Witnessing Together: The Nanjing Massacre of 1937" was unveiled at the Peace Memorial Hall located here. The exhibition uses more than 270 historical photographs, more than 50 exhibits and video materials to tell french and European audiences about the historical catastrophe of the Nanjing Massacre.
On the morning of November 24, 2017 local time, an exhibition called "The Catastrophe of Mankind 1937" was held in Los Angeles, USA, and the exhibition used a large number of text and pictures to tell the American people about the atrocities of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese army invading China. The butcher's knife of the invaders slashed at innocent people, and the victims lay in groups in pools of blood... Historical photographs documenting massacres, rapes, robberies, arson, and other atrocities committed by the Japanese invasion of China deeply shocked the American people who visited the exhibition.
Also promoting the international dissemination of the historical facts of the Holocaust are forces from the people. From July 15 to 23, 2017, the Nanjing Folk Anti-Japanese War Museum held an exhibition of the history of the Nanjing Massacre in Hiroshima, Japan, and many historical materials, including the family letters of the soldiers of the Japanese army that invaded China, let the ordinary people of Japan understand the historical truth of the massacre at close range. Lu Ling, daughter of Nanjing Massacre survivor Li Xiuying, also went to Japan with her mother's personal experience and her own feelings to arouse the Japanese public's understanding and reflection on history.
Wu Xianbin, director of the Nanjing Folk Anti-Japanese War Museum, who has been engaged in the study of the historical facts of the Nanjing Massacre for many years and has been to Japan many times to hold related exhibitions, said: "The choice to hold an exhibition in Hiroshima, where the atomic bomb exploded, is to remind the Hiroshima and Japanese people that while remembering their own harm, they should not forget the harm suffered by Nanjing and the people of Chinese, oppose war, face history squarely, and cherish peace." ”
In the massacre of the city 84 years ago, Johann Rabe, a German who was chairman of the International Committee of the Nanjing Safety Zone, preserved important historical materials of the Nanjing Massacre through his diary and other means. On the eve of the National Day of Public Commemoration in 2017, a photocopy of Rabe's Diary donated and published by Rabe's family was published for the first time, once again restoring the tragic history of the Nanjing Massacre.
On November 12, 2017, the monument to Dr. Wilson, an American doctor who personally treated thousands of injured refugees in Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, was inaugurated in his hometown of Arcadia, and Dai Shouzhen, deputy mayor of the city, said at the inauguration ceremony that the establishment of the monument is to warn people not to forget history, prevent the recurrence of human tragedies, and cherish peace and maintain peace requires the joint efforts of mankind.
"The Death of the Homeland" Becomes "Human Memory"
With the spread of the history of the Nanjing Massacre overseas, more and more overseas people have joined in disseminating the historical facts of the Nanjing Massacre and defending the memory of mankind.
Japanese scholar Nobuyuki Tanaka's book "Shouldering Together: A Dialogue on the Responsibility of Japanese Fathers and Sons in the War of Aggression against China", published by people's daily publishing house in August 2015, is a dialogue between Tanaka Nobuyuki, as a son, and his father who participated in the war of aggression against China, containing more than 300 letters and wartime diaries, which restore the Japanese invasion of China from the side. "I want more Japanese people to open their eyes and face the facts." He said.
Matsuoka Ring, a retired Japanese female teacher, has been traveling between China and Japan for more than 30 years, searching for the truth and disseminating historical facts. She visited more than 300 survivors of the Nanjing Massacre and 250 veterans of the Japanese army invading China, published testimonies, filmed documentary films, invited survivors of the Nanjing Massacre to hold testimony gatherings, and also came to the recording studio of the memorial hall to record explanatory words in Japanese about the history of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese invasion of China, and gave them to the Japanese visitors who visited the memorial hall. She is over 70 years old and said: "In order to let the young generation of Japanese people know the truth about history, I will continue to insist." ”
In October 2017, John Magee's grandson, Chris Magee, came to Nanjing, following the location and route of his grandfather's shooting in Nanjing, all the way to pursue and re-shoot. Chris Magee said he had seen his grandfather's images of the Nanjing Massacre many years ago, images that had been engraved in his mind for years. This time to follow in the footsteps of my grandfather is to learn more about the truth of history by shooting films. To this end, he also interviewed Xia Shuqin, a survivor of the Nanjing Massacre, "hoping to tell the real history to more people." ”
From 2017 to 2019, Chris Magee came to Nanjing six times, visiting more than 20 places and using images to travel through Nanjing's past and present. He tells others about this history through photographs and grandfather stories.
Megan Brady is from Canada, and her great-grandfather was Richard Brady, an American surgeon at Drum Tower Hospital. When Megan Brady visited the Jiangdongmen Memorial Hall, she was touched by the story of the American Minnie Weitlin saving women and children, and wrote the song "Empathy", hoping to evoke the resonance of the world's youth for this period of history with the song.
In October 2017, the Canadian province of Ontario became the first region outside China to establish a "Nanjing Massacre Victims' Memorial Day" through a motion by Chinese lawmaker Huang Sumei to designate December 13 of each year as the "Nanjing Massacre Victims' Remembrance Day".
In 2017, Nanjing became the 169th city in the world and the only international city for peace in China.
The Nanjing Massacre caused incurable wounds to the survivors, many of whom have repeated the wounds over and over again over many years in order to arouse respect and remembrance of history. 84 years have passed, some survivors have left us forever, the survivors have also aged, and their descendants have taken over the baton of their fathers and grandparents and become the inheritors of the history of the Nanjing Massacre, so that this history has been sublimated from family memory to the common memory of mankind.
Ge Fengjin, the son of survivor Ge Daorong, is one of the inheritors, he has participated in the activities organized by the memorial hall for many years, dedicated to the dissemination of the history of the Nanjing Massacre, "I will be a messenger of peace, do my best to spread the historical truth of the Nanjing Massacre, let more people remember the history, cherish the present, and face the future." ”
Since the first National Day of Commemoration for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre on December 13, 2014, the national memorial has made the historical facts of the Nanjing Massacre more widely recognized and recognized by the world.
On October 10, 2015, the Nanjing Massacre Archive was selected into UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, and the wide dissemination of the historical facts of the Nanjing Massacre solidified the "death of the homeland" into "human memory".
On October 24 this year, the 2021 Nanjing Peace Forum opened at the Purple Mountain Music Station, which is the second time that the Peace Forum has been held in Nanjing. In September 2020, UNESCO signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Nanjing, confirming that for three consecutive years it would co-host the Nanjing Peace Forum and related activities with Nanjing, a city of peace in Nanjing.
History continues to write forward, and after the hardships of Nanjing, the cherishing and protection of peace has melted into the blood of the city and will accompany her forward.
Source: Nanjing Daily