PARIS, Oct. 22 -- A Chinese exhibition entitled "Common Witness: The Rape of Nanking or Nanjing Massacre" opened Saturday in the Caen Memorial in Caen, a town in northwestern France.

It is the first exhibition in Europe to display China's collection on the massacre since the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization added the Nanjing Massacre to its Memory of the World Register in 2015.

The exhibition spans 800 square meters, with over 270 photos, 50 pieces of physical evidence and videos on the Nanjing Massacre, which lasted from Dec. 13, 1937 to January 1938, during which more than 300,000 civilians and Chinese unarmed soldiers were killed by Japanese invaders, said Zhang Jianjun, general director of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall.

The Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, which co-organized the exhibition with the Caen Memorial, is China's largest museum dedicated to this massacre.

This exhibition mainly introduces the massacre in the eyes of European and American witnesses who were in Nanjing during the unusual inhuman tragedy, presenting original contents from the archives in the form of daily notes, letters, documents, photos and videos made by these witnesses, Zhang said.

"We welcome this exhibition for our public to learn that the Second World War indeed started in July 1937. In China, your people, like all peoples in the war, including the Japanese people, suffered terribly from this inhumanity of man to man," said Stephane Grimaldi, general director of the Caen Memorial, during the exhibition's inauguration ceremony.

"History does not change. History is not forgotten. It sheds light on the future. It is in remembering the cruelty of war that we understand better the value of peace. We meet here today, not to perpetuate the hatred, but to enable our future generations to live in peace," said Chinese Ambassador to France Zhai Jun.

The on-site visitors are deeply attracted by this exhibition. "This is my first visit to an exhibition about the Nanjing Massacre. The number of people who were killed, the little reaction the massacre has caused internationally ... are surprising," a 30-year-old French visitor Daniel told Xinhua.