Established in 1992, UNESCO's Memory of the World Program is an international initiative to preserve valuable documentary heritage worldwide. Recently, documents related to the Nanjing Massacre have been submitted for inclusion on the UNESCO list by authorities in Nanjing, in east China's Jiangsu Province.

The files include a total of 183 volumes of historic documents about the atrocities committed in the eastern Chinese city, where Japanese soldiers went on a six-week spree of rape, slaughter and destruction from December 1937. Estimates of the dead reach as high as 300,000 people.

This is the third time that Nanjing has submitted the documents for inclusion in Memory of the World Program. Before this submission, five groups of valuable archives had already been chosen for the application.

(CNTV.cn February 18, 2014)