As the country today commemorates the 68th anniversary of the 1937 Lugouqiao (Marco Polo Bridge) Incident that marked the start of Japan's all-out assault on China, two more survivors of the Nanjing Massacre have been found overseas.

Lu Anli, 85, and Li Daokui, 73, are now living in Spain and New Zealand respectively, reported Jiangsu-based Modern Express yesterday.

"It's the first time we have found survivors outside China," Zhu Chengshan, curator of the Nanjing Memorial Hall for Compatriots Murdered in the Nanjing Massacre, was quoted as saying.

In December 1937, Nanjing fell to the invading Japanese army, and a six-week-long massacre ensued. According to records kept by several welfare organizations which buried the dead after the massacre, around 300,000 people, mostly civilians, were brutally slaughtered.

Li wrote to Zhu last month from Auckland to recall the terrible experience his family endured during the massacre.

The then-five-year-old boy's grandmother was killed by Japanese soldiers, his aunt raped, and his mother suffered mental trauma ever after.

Lu, then 17, survived by escaping to a refugee camp set up by foreigners in the city. She witnessed Japanese troops engaged in a killing, burning, and raping spree.

"Their memories are the best evidence for the Japanese invaders' brutality," Zhu said.

Statistics indicate that there are at least 400 survivors of the massacre still alive.

Meanwhile, activities are being held throughout the country to commemorate the Lugouqiao Incident, during which the intruding Japanese forces assaulted the Marco Polo Bridge in Wanping County.

A large exhibition opens today at the Chinese Museum of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression beside the Marco Polo Bridge in suburban Beijing, where the incident took place.

Hundreds of valuable pictures and relics are on display, among them 141 items are on show for the first time.

In another development, German Ambassador to China Volker Stanzel, speaking at Beijing Normal University, said yesterday that the key to German re-integration into Europe after World War II was its responsible attitude towards its history.

Only by facing up to and atoning for its wartime past did it succeed in winning forgiveness from other European countries, he said.

(China Daily July 7, 2005)