“The Forgotten Holocaust”: Horrific Photos From The Rape Of Nanking, 1937-1938.

 Left: A Chinese woman is tied to a pole and forcibly kissed by a Japanese soldier. Right: Elsewhere, a man is left blindfolded and tied up. Both images were taken during the Rape of Nanking.

“The Forgotten Holocaust”: Horrific Photos From The Rape Of Nanking, 1937-1938.

These tragic photos and stories that capture the horrors of the Nanking Massacre (a.k.a. the Rape of Nanking) committed by Japanese soldiers against Chinese civilians in 1937-1938.

We 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.

While Europe was struggling to hold off the Nazi war machine, China was fending off the Japanese invasion that first launched in late 1937. They fought hard, in the end losing as many as 20 million lives (the second most of any country involved in the war) to keep the Japanese Empire from conquering much of East Asia and the Pacific.

And as many as 17 million Chinese casualties weren’t soldiers. They were civilians, unarmed and defenseless, and many of them were put through unimaginable hell before they were killed.

Some of the worst of it occurred over the six weeks after the Japanese stormed into the Chinese capital of Nanking (now known as Nanjing) in December 1937.