Below are three passages from an article by Edward Alden published in The Vancouver Sun of December 13, 1997, covering Iris Chang's book, The Rape of Nanking:

Sixty years ago today, the Japanese imperial army marched unchallenged into the Chinese capital of Nanking and for the next six weeks mercilessly raped, tortured, mutilated and ultimately murdered more than 300,000 women, men and children.

IN NOVEMBER 1937, after their successful invasion of Shanghai, the Japanese launched a massive attack on the newly established capital of the Republic of China.  When the city fell on Dec. 13, 1937, Japanese soldiers began an orgy of cruelty seldom, if ever, matched in world history. TENS OF THOUSANDS of young men were rounded up and herded to the outer areas of the city, where they were mowed down by machine-guns, used for bayonet practice, or soaked with gasoline and burned alive.  For months the streets of the city were heaped with corpses and reeked with the stench of rotting human flesh.  Years later experts at the International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE) estimated that more than 260,000 non-combatants died at the hands of Japanese soldiers at Nanking in late 1937 and early 1938, though some experts have placed the figure at well over 350,000. ... USING NUMBERS KILLED alone, the Rape of Nanking surpasses much of the worst barbarism of the ages.  The Japanese outdid the Romans at Carthage (only 150,000 died in that slaughter), the Christian armies during the Spanish inquisition, and even some of the monstrosities of Timur Lenk, who killed 100,000 prisoners at Delhi in 1398 and built two towers of skulls in Syria in 1400 and 1401. IT IS CERTAINLY TRUE that in this century, when the tools of mass murder were fully refined, Hitler killed about six million Jews, and Stalin more than 40 million Russians.  But these deaths occurred over several years.  In the Rape of Nanking the killing was concentrated within a few weeks.

Chang's book is a relentless barrage of brutality.  The Japanese soldiers engaged in "killing contests" to see who could decapitate the most Chinese prisoners of war; Chinese captives were buried alive, burned alive, nailed to boards, torn to death by German shepherds, used for bayonet practice or stabbed to death by hundreds of needle pricks; girls as young as eight and women as old as 80 were sadistically raped, tortured and killed; and the Japanese forced fathers to rape their daughters, brothers their sisters, and sons their mothers.

One would imagine, then, that if the Canadian Department of Justice had been truly looking for war criminals to prosecute or to extradite from the end of World War II to the present, then the Rape of Nanking would provide rich pickings.  If war criminals are indeed the issue, then one would have expected Canada's successive Justice Ministers to have been asking whether any of the veterans of the Rape of Nanking were living in Canada, whether Japanese applicants for immigration to Canada were being properly interrogated about their war service, whether Japanese residents of Canada were being investigated for having concealed their war service from Canadian immigration officials.  If war criminals were really the issue, then Canadians would be as familiar with the Vancouver Sun photograph of a Chinese head placed by the Japanese on a fence and with a cigarette inserted into its mouth as a joke as they are with pictures of Nazi victims.

However, it would appear that the search for war criminals is concentrated not on the Japanese, but on East Europeans, particularly Ukrainians.  But what have Ukrainians done to compare with the Rape of Nanking?  Not much.  They are quite excluded from lists of atrocities such as the ones mentioned in Edward Alden's Vancouver Sun article.  You will recollect that Jewish Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg summarizes Ukrainian anti-Jewish activity thusly:

First, truly spontaneous pogroms, free from Einsatzgruppen influence, did not take place; all outbreaks were either organized or inspired by the Einsatzgruppen.  Second, all pogroms were implemented within a short time after the arrival of the killing units.  They were not self-perpetuating, nor could new ones be started after things had settled down.  (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 312)

The Slavic population stood estranged and even aghast before the unfolding spectacle of the "final solution."  There was on the whole no impelling desire to cooperate in a process of such utter ruthlessness.  The fact that the Soviet regime, fighting off the Germans a few hundred miles to the east, was still threatening to return, undoubtedly acted as a powerful restraint upon many a potential collaborator.  (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 308)

Ukrainian war crimes during World War II, then, appear to be rather paltry in comparison to some that can be found.  Why then is it that Ukrainians are constantly smeared as being the world's greatest war criminals?  Who is responsible for this misdirected smearing?  How long can the Canadian public be duped into believing that Canada's Justice Minister Anne McLellan today is hunting war criminals when in reality she is serving as a tool to carry out the political agenda of a foreign power?

And finally, if all peoples were judged impartially by the Western media, then alongside Oscar Schindler's efforts on behalf of Hungarian Jews would be placed the comparable — and possibly greatly superior — efforts of a German:

Those who lived, ironically, did so mainly because of the heroic efforts of a local German businessman and Nazi party chief, John Rabe, who along with other foreigners set up a "safety zone" in Nanking to protect civilians.

But how frightfully confusing it would be to release this image for public consumption!  A Nazi party chief wading into an atrocity to save lives!  The much-manipulated newspaper reader or television viewer cannot be allowed more than a rare glimpse of such a scene, else it might invite him to begin questioning the stereotypes that have been so painstakingly inculcated in him over the decades.  And Rabe left behind a 2,000-page diary! — Great material for a movie?  Can we expect Steven Spielberg to make a "Rabe's List" to parallel his "Schindler's List"?  No, Rabe will never get the coverage of Schindler.  "Rabe's List" will never be made.  The danger is that more than a rare glimpse of such incongruities as Rabe might bring people around to recognizing a great truth — a truth that is self-evident to all except those who have succumbed to brain-washing:

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties — but right through every human heart — and all human hearts.                   — Alexander Solzhenitsyn