December 13 is the "National Day of Commemoration for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre", which is used in the form of a national memorial to commemorate the victims of the Nanjing Massacre and even the War of Resistance Against Japan. We need to use this form to remember the tragic history, expose the great evil of the war of aggression, reflect on the causes of "evil", and avoid the recurrence of the tragedy in the future.
Many writers have recorded and written about the Nanjing Massacre in different ways and from different angles, and reading these books helps us to return to the scene of history and rethink the occurrence of "evil".
The Nanjing Massacre – The Forgotten Massacre
"Nanjing Havoc" is a Chinese writer Zhang Chun truthfully interviewed many holocaust survivors, and with the help of historical archives, diaries and letters of third parties, a restoration of the historical scene of the Nanjing Massacre, briefly describing the "story of Chinese individuals in the holocaust: failure, despair, betrayal and surviving experiences", as well as the selfless help of Westerners in the process.
In this book, Zhang Chunru shows us the cruelty of war, the brutality of the enemy, how teenage children have become murderous machines that destroy their nature, and how the Chinese people captured by the Japanese have lost the courage to resist in front of the butcher's knife, and even become the coolies of the Japanese slaughter, helping to bury the bodies of their compatriots. She also shows the selfless relief of humanitarians and the brilliance of humanity embodied in it.
In the last part of the book, Zhang Chunru solemnly discusses the issue of historical forgetting. "The reason why the Nanjing Massacre didn't penetrate the consciousness of the people of the world as deeply as the Nazi massacre of Jews or the atomic bomb of Hiroshima was because the victims themselves remained silent," she said. She discusses how the Japanese have used a reinterpretation of history to create a historical atmosphere of "group forgetting." "To forget the Holocaust is to be a second massacre," Ilissever said.
The Rabe Diary
The Diary of Rabe is a diary of the German Johann Raabe from 1937 to 1938, which truly and emotionally records the process of the Nanjing Massacre from the perspective of a Westerner. Rabe was the German commercial representative for Siemens in China and chaired the International Committee for the Nanjing Security Zone in the days leading up to and after the Japanese occupation of Nanjing. Surprisingly, he was a Nazi, but he used that identity to do a lot of things to protect ordinary people.
In this six-hundred-page book, we see a good man who can still uphold justice and goodness in the face of danger, and Rabe, under pressure from the Japanese army, repeatedly reaches out to strangers to rescue them, leaving the victims in the "safe zone". He was a Nazi German, but retained the most precious sympathy and goodwill. In this book, we can see not only the cruelty of the Holocaust, but also the warmth of human nature.
The Diary of Rabe has been adapted into the film of the same name
"Jinling Thirteen Chao"
"Jinling Thirteen Chao" is a novella by Yan Geling, the background of the story is the Japanese invasion of Nanjing, several foreign clerics took in a group of female college students hiding in the church, 13 dust women and six wounded soldiers of the Nationalist army. Initially the church could have become a safe zone, but soon the Japanese army broke into the church. In order to protect the female college students in the church, 13 dusty women resolutely replaced them to participate in the Japanese Christmas celebrations, and in the end, except for Yumo, there was no life left.
The most moving thing in the story is naturally Yan Geling's description of 13 wind and dust women, and the humble status and the noble personality form a strong contrast, giving the reader a huge impact. Especially Yumo, although she is a prostitute, she is not self-deprecating, she has read some books, but she is tricked by fate. The spirit of sacrifice they finally embodied in front of the Japanese army was very moving.
"Jinling Thirteen Chao" was adapted by director Zhang Yimou into a film of the same name
The Complete Documentary of the Nanjing Massacre
The Complete Documentary of the Nanjing Massacre is a reportage written by He Jianming. Fortunately, this book restores the history of the Nanjing Massacre in more detail in chronological order, and the historical materials are very rich and detailed. Despite being documentary literature, He Jianming's writings have not lost any power in order to calm down, and his writings are full of anger and grief as a countryman. The book cites many first-hand sources, such as the original diaries of Japanese generals such as Matsui Ishigen and Sasaki, as well as the records of the media such as Asia Minor, Chuo Ilbo, and Tokyo Ilbo Shimbun, which strengthen the authenticity of the information in the book and bring greater shock. From the diaries of the Japanese generals, we can truly see how the Japanese troops slaughtered innocent people, but then there was no remorse and reflection; in such a war, human nature could not withstand the test, how easy it was to fall to the side of evil.
Our historical imagination of the Nanjing Massacre often only stays on the numbers and cold narratives in high school textbooks, and when we read this book, the history and those blood and tears seem to be all around us.
The Diary of Wittlin
At the time of the Nanjing Massacre, Ms. Minnie Weitlin was the dean of the Jinling Women's College of Arts and Sciences and the head of the Department of Education, and the Diary of Wei Telin is her diary during the Nanjing Massacre and the subsequent Colonial Rule of the Japanese Army, recorded from August 1937 to April 1940. Like Rabe, she was one of the expatriates who selflessly rescued Chinese during the Holocaust, and her Jinling Women's College of Arts and Sciences later became a refugee shelter for women refugees, taking in tens of thousands of Chinese women and children. The war brought her deep stimulus, and after returning home from depression in 1940, she wrote to a friend: "If there is a second life, I am still willing to serve Chinese." A year after leaving China, she committed suicide at home.
Reading this diary, we can see the humanitarian spirit of Ms. Wei Tering, and we can also see how terrible the violence carried out by the Japanese army in Nanjing at that time was. Weitering wrote in her diary: "From a military point of view, the occupation of Nanking may be considered a victory for the Japanese army, but from a moral point of view, it is a defeat and a shame for the Japanese nation." ”
Finally, I would like to conclude by quoting a passage from Ms. Zhang Chunru in "The Nanjing Catastrophe":
"The photographs hanging on the walls of Pucutino show that thousands of lives can be destroyed by the arrogant thoughts of others, and that this death becomes meaningless the next day. What is more, those who brought death went so far as to humiliate the victims, forcing them to die in the greatest possible pain and shame. Such cruel disrespect for death, such a regression in the process of human society, will only shrink into a footnote to history. Unless someone forces the world to remember it, it's like a harmless little mistake in a computer program that might or may not cause any problems. Thinking about it, I felt a palpitation. ”
Remembering history is our greatest memorial and responsibility to the victims, and it is also the deepest responsibility and expectation of our generation for the future world.