Making Sense Of Chang’s Passing

The suicide of Iris Chang, the best-selling author of The Rape of Nanking, has raised questions about the toll of exposure to large-scale brutality.

“When you are done writing the work, bringing it to the public successfully, even being praised, you wake up one morning and say to yourself, ‘They’re still dead,’ and that’s really the most profound reaction there is,” Hilberg, author of the definitive history “The Destruction of the European Jews,” said.

Chang’s passing was especially distressing because so little had been written about the atrocities committed by the Japanese in China (and Korea) and the world needed more people like her.