Mark Gagnon

Even in that darkness, some refused to look away.

Some refused to join in.

Some risked their own lives to protect strangers.

Their courage doesn't erase the horror, but...

In a way, it matters, right, especially to the thousands who survived because of them.

And I think the lesson of Nanjing isn't about Japan or about China.

It's about what humans do when the restraints fall away and what some choose to do even then.

The cruelty and the compassion happen side by side in the same city during the same winter.

And both of these stories are real and should be remembered.

The dead of Nanjing can't speak anymore.

The survivors are almost gone, but the memory remains in museums and films and books and ultimately in the minds of people who refuse to forget this atrocity.

Remembering is obviously painful and it's difficult to research and talk about, but I think it's important not to assign guilt about how these people are evil and these people are victims, but to understand the stakes of forgetting.

winter came to nanjing in december 1937 and it brought six weeks of maybe the worst atrocity experienced uh one of the worst atrocities certainly experienced in the century that winter ended and the city rebuilt and life returned but the shadow never fully goes away and it sits in our history as a warning and a reminder the city survives the memory endures

And in that memory is hope, not that it will never happen again, but when history begins to rhyme, people will remember Nanjing and hopefully choose differently.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of the Nanjing Massacre.

I mean, it's a heavy one, right?

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know.

I do think about the...

the uh mr rogers quote was like like isn't mr rogers i think it is could you google this but like in the face of any atrocity any terrible thing that happens it's like you can be consumed by how evil it is and you can just let like the grief and the horror consume you or you can look for the people that are doing good and try to contribute and in any type of atrocity any type of