Iris Chang > Quotes

“As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

“Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

“When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day — but by the minute.”
― Iris Chang

“Looking back upon millennia of history, it appears clear that no race or culture has monopoly on wartime cruelty. The veneer of civilization seems to be exceedingly thin – one that can be easily stripped away, especially by the stresses of war.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

“The Rape of Nanking did not penetrate the world consciousness in the same manner as the Holocaust or Hiroshima because the victims themselves had remained silent.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

“The spoken word vanished with the wind. Likewise, the unrecorded life disappears as if it never existed.”
― Iris Chang

“Apparently some quirk in human nature allows even the most unspeakable acts of evil to become banal within minutes, provided only that they occur far enough away to pose no personal threat.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality.”
― Iris Chang

“The heroic efforts of the Americans and Europeans during this period are so numerous (their diaries run for thousands of pages) that it is impossible to narrate all of their deeds here.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“on the famous Lord Acton line: “Power kills, and absolute power kills absolutely.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“Perhaps the most fascinating character to emerge from the history of the Rape of Nanking is the German businessman John Rabe. To most of the Chinese in the city, he was a hero, “the living Buddha of Nanking,” the legendary head of the International Safety Zone who saved hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“In Japan censorship is practiced not only by the government when it tampers with textbooks but by the media, which police themselves.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“In 1996 I began an investigation into the life of John Rabe and eventually unearthed thousands of pages of diaries that he and other Nazis kept during the Rape. These diaries led me to conclude that John Rabe was “the Oskar Schindler of China.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“Racial and ethnic tensions simmer just below the surface in virtually all multiethnic societies, but it usually takes an economic crisis to blow off the lid of civility and allow deep-seated hatred to degenerate into violence.”
― Iris Chang, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History

“So sickening was the spectacle that even the Nazis in the city were horrified, one proclaiming the massacre to be the work of “bestial machinery.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“Some even tried to use opium to commit suicide, swallowing large doses as poison. Others turned to crime to support their addiction, causing a wave of banditry to sweep through Nanking. After making conditions ripe for banditry in Nanking, the Japanese used the epidemic of crimes to justify their occupation, preaching the need for imperial law and order.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“Because they saw themselves as intellectuals rather than refugees, they were concerned less about preserving their Chinese heritage than with casting their lot with modern America, and eventual American citizenship. It is in connection with these immigrants, not surprisingly, that the term “model minority” first appeared. The term refers to an image of the Chinese as working hard, asking for little, and never complaining. It is a term that many Chinese now have mixed feelings about.”
― Iris Chang, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History

“recent response to the atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda: while thousands have died almost unbelievably cruel deaths, the entire world has watched CNN and wrung its hands.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“history have noted that the sheer concentration of power in government is lethal—that only a sense of absolute unchecked power can make atrocities like the Rape of Nanking possible.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“As economist Thomas Sowell has noted, middleman minorities typically arrive in their host countries with education, skills, or a set of propitious attitudes about work, such as business frugality and the willingness to take risks. Some slave away in lowly menial jobs to raise capital, then swiftly become merchants, retailers, labor contractors, and money-lenders. Their descendants usually thrive in the professions, such as medicine, law, engineering, or finance.”
― Iris Chang, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History

“So sickening was the spectacle that even the Nazis in the city were horrified, one proclaiming the massacre to be the work of “bestial machinery.” Yet the Rape of Nanking remains an obscure incident. Unlike the atomic explosions in Japan or the Jewish holocaust in Europe, the horrors of the massacre at Nanking remain virtually unknown to people outside Asia. The massacre remains neglected in most of the historical literature published in the United States.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“The suicide risk for mental health patients goes up during changes in medication.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“The Ministry interfered with Ienaga’s attempts to document the Nanking massacre for schoolchildren. For example, in his textbook manuscript Ienaga wrote: “Immediately after the occupation of Nanking, the Japanese Army killed numerous Chinese soldiers and citizens. This incident came to be known as the Nanking Massacre.” The examiner commented: “Readers might interpret this description as meaning that the Japanese Army unilaterally massacred Chinese immediately after the occupation. This passage should be revised so that it is not interpreted in such a way.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“There are several important lessons to be learned from Nanking, and one is that civilization itself is tissue-thin.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“If you are struck by a bus, someone may steal your purse or wallet while you lie injured, but many more will come to your aid, trying to save your precious life. One person will call 911, and another will race down the street to alert a police officer on his or her beat. Someone else will take off his coat, fold it, and place it under your head, so that if these are indeed your last moments of life you will die in the small but real comfort of knowing that someone cared about you.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

“And maps can really point to places
Where life is evil now:
Nanking; Dachau. —WILLIAM C. KIRBY,
Professor of Modern Chinese
History and Chairman of the
Department of History,”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“Looking back upon millennia of history, it appears clear that no race or culture has a monopoly on wartime cruelty. The veneer of civilization seems to be exceedingly thin—one that can be easily stripped away, especially by the stresses of war.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“This pervasive sense of danger has discouraged many serious scholars from visiting Japanese archives to conduct their research on the subject; indeed, I was told in Nanking that the People’s Republic of China rarely permits its scholars to journey to Japan for fear of jeopardizing their physical safety.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“In a sixty-page report released in June 1938, Smythe concluded that the 120 air raids that Nanking experienced and the four-day siege of the city did only 1 percent of the damage inflicted by the Japanese army after it entered Nanking.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II

“To a man who came from a military culture in which pilots were given swords instead of parachutes, and in which suicide was infinitely preferable to capture, it was incomprehensible that the Chinese would not fight an enemy to the death.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II