INCOMPARABLE "Is there a child today in any part of the United States, and perhaps in many other parts of the world, who has not seen the gruesome pictures of the gas chambers at Auschwitz or read at least part of the haunting tale of the young Anne Frank?"# The story of the German Holocaust is one heard around the world. Jews were rounded up from all over Europe and placed in concentration camps where they waited to die. This act of genocide shocked the world. Meanwhile, in China, an even more gruesome assault was underway on another ethnic group. Japanese soldiers invaded Nanking, the capital of China, full of anger, eager for revenge. These Japanese soldiers committed countless atrocities. For "Six Weeks of Terror"# the Japanese troops raped women, killed children and burned the city to the ground. This slaughter of humanity didn't reach main stream press like the Holocaust did.
Chinese Brush for Writing Calligraphy
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Auschwitz concentration camp, arrival of Hungarian...The methods of terror at Auschwitz seem innocent when compared to the actions of Japanese troops at Nanking. Adolf Hitler called for an ethnic cleansing of the Jewish race, where as the Japanese were attempting to acquire living space. In writing The Rape of Nanking Iris Chang attempts to equate the motives behind and enormities committed during the Holocaust with those of Japanese troops at Nanking. Without a closed mind I can acknowledge a few similarities between the two massacres, but in my opinion it is unfair to equate the German Holocaust with the rape of Nanking.
One of the elements of each bloodletting, which Iris Chang attempts to compare, is the method of killing. In the concentration camps at Auschwitz, Jewish families were separated and put to work, digging graves and building barracks. Many grew ill from malnutrition. When the sick where no longer productive, they...