The Killing Fields and Toul Sleng Genocide Museum
Silence…. that’s all we could manage after going to Choeung Ek Memorial (The Killing Fields) and Tould Sleng Genocide Museum today. It was a lot like the visit to Sachenhausen in Germany back in September… It just knocked all the wind out of me.
From April 17th, 1975 (Yeah, coincidentally, that’s 32 years ago TODAY) to January 7th 1979, the Ultra Communist Khmer Rouge Regime, led by the Pol Pot, controlled the whole of Cambodia. During this short period of time, about 2 million Cambodians were either murdered, or died from disease, malnutrition, neglect, or mistreatment. So that’s 2 million people in less than 4 years…. that’s just astounding considering that the population at that time was less than 10 million.
So, John and I dedicated today to paying our respects to the victims and their families. The walk through the killing fields was… I don’t know how to describe it… it was like you could almost feel the souls of those who were burried there… it just weighed so heavily on me. To think, this was only 30 years ago… If you were to ask a younger North American about the 70’s, you’d probably hear about bad haircuts, polyester pants, and disco music…. ask the same thing to a young Cambodian and you could possibly hear their horror story of watching their family get executed at a killing field…. just something to think about.
The Toul Sleng Genocide Museum was also a powerful place to visit. It used to be known as the S-21 prison, a place where men, women, and children were interrogated, tortured, and starved before eventually being killed. This prison, which once was a high school, now houses historical artifacts as reminders of the past. Metal beds with ankle chains still attached, ammunition boxes, prison cells where you could see tally marks carved into the walls…. as if that wasn’t bad enough, photos of bodies in the beds hang above the respective beds where the bodies were found… it made me sick to my stomach.
Some of the rooms housed hundreds of photos of prisoners. The portraits of face after face were almost just as bad as the photos of dead bodies… and why is that? Because you can see into the eyes of the people. You could see and feel the sadness… the hopelessness… the pain. In the eyes of the young children, there was a total loss of innocence… there wasn’t that glow in a child’s eyes that makes you smile…. It was just so sad.
Although I will never be able to fully know and understand how such things happen, I’m glad I came to see these sites and at least try to grasp the reality of it.
Tags: Cambodia
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