CHINA

The R*pe of Nanking is the most difficult book I have ever read, so much so that I had to put it down. Iris Chang, memorialized with 1938’s victims of Japanese brutality in Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre, could be thanked for being the first to spread awareness about this “forgotten Holocaust of WWII” in the Western world. It’s pretty surreal to be here in situ because it takes your breath away. You can’t breathe because you can’t begin to grasp the scope and gamification of it all. And not to mention, the excavated burial site of 10,000+ that the memorial sits atop.

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In tandem but also a more hopeful light, my first stop while arriving in Shanghai was not the Bund or a shitty bar with a Huangpu River view, rather, Hongkou district, once the site of the Jewish Quarter. There I explored the streets that largely remain untouched since World War II. You get a sense of what life was like for a Jewish refugee, having to pick up and resettle in possibly the most foreign land they could imagine. In the heart of Hongkou stands the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, a worthy visit for yet another forgotten chapter in wartime history.