Chen Baozhu died at the age of 89. (Photo /Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall)

On Nov. 12, a survivor of the Nanjing Massacre passed away in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, reducing the number of registered survivors of the atrocity to 109.

Chen Baozhu died at the age of 89. Before her death, Chen left a testimony of her experience at the Japanese invaders’ hands during the massacre. According to Chen, Japanese troops abducted and raped many Chinese women, including Chen’s sister-in-law.

In addition to Chen, another two survivors passed away earlier this month: Ren Jingping, a 94-year-old survivor who died on Nov. 10, and Li Zhong, who died at the age of 90 on Nov. 7. Li was unable to leave a testimony due to his poor health.

The death of so many survivors has worried Chinese historians, who point out that the work of collecting testimonies will be harder and harder in the future.

According to the University of Southern California's (USC) Shoah Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to conducting audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides, the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall currently holds around 4,000 testimonies. Of those testimonies, most are in written form, though a smaller number of audio-visual testimonies have also been archived.

In order to preserve oral testimonies, the memorial hall launched a data collection project in October, aiming to gather oral records and visual files from 50 survivors who still retain clear memories of the massacre.

The Nanjing Massacre, which took place on Dec. 13, 1937, led to the murder of over 300,000 Chinese citizens, including defenseless civilians and unarmed soldiers. There were also innumerable reports of rape, looting and arson.