Dance: Mourning

"It was a dismal, dismal day, with a moaning wind all day long. To us in Nanking, the world seemed to be one of sadness and despair…" Recorded in the diary of Whihelmina Vautrin is one of the darkest chapters of World War II – the Nanjing Massacre.

In December 1937, the Japanese aggressors captured Nanjing and rampaged through the Chinese city for more than six weeks. They embarked on a massacre that was unprecedented in its brutality and scale in all human history – torturing, raping, looting and murdering in ways beyond imagination. The atrocities of the Japanese troops claimed the lives of over 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers. Now, a time for mourning.