French people call Nanjing Massacre 'painful and horrifying'

Daniel Renouf and his wife visit the exhibition of historical facts about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in the Memorial de Caen museum in France on Saturday. It will run until Dec 15. [Photo by Fu Jing/chinadaily.com.cn]

The retired French engineer Daniel Renouf was born in August 1937, days after Japanese troops attacked China and several months before the Nanjing Massacre, which claimed 300,000 lives. Together with his wife, he joined French people in the hundreds on Saturday at an exhibition about the World War II-era war crimes.

With his wife holding a stick, they carefully examined the 270 historical photos, diaries, letters and other documents from Western diplomats, professors, doctors and reporters from the 1930s. The exhibit in the Memorial de Caen museum in France runs until Dec 15.

"The year 1937 is very special for us, and we had such very sad historic memories in our mind as we had grown," said Renouf, who was one of the last to leave the exhibition, which opened on Saturday afternoon.

"We knew something about the Nanjing Massacre."

However, Renouf, a resident of Caen, a city about 200 kilometers from Paris, said the exhibition helped him know more about the "horrifying pages" of Japanese aggression against China.

"These equal the Nazi crimes in Europe, and I believe, we must stop," said Renouf.

Japanese troops killed an estimated 300,000 civilians and unarmed soldiers s they rampaged through Nanjing in 1937. Thousands of women had been raped.

China has made Dec 13, the date when the Nanjing Massacre started, a National Memorial Day since 2014. And more than 30 similar exhibitions have been organized across the world, but the French exhibit is the first in Europe to display historical facts about Nanjing.

The Memorial de Caen museum, which opened in 1988, is dedicated to the history of conflict in the 20th century. It is considered the only European museum to recount and explain World War II from a global perspective.

Stephane Grimaldi, the museum director, said for many Europeans and Americans, the Second World War is only about Europe.

"But from the historic facts, you can see that this war started from China, due to Japanese aggression. It was not only in Europe but also in Asia, mainly in China," said Grimaldi. "We want to expose these historic truths to the public."