Killing Fields and Genocide Museum

Due to the somber nature of these spots, we have decided to write this post differently. There will be far fewer photos, with focus on more beautiful scenes and important monuments. We will also share our personal experiences.

Steve -

Although numbers are unclear there were between 2 and 3 million people killed by the Khmer Rouge. This is out of a population of about 8 million at the time. Imagine, 1 out of 3 or 4 of your countrymen dead.

The Choeung Ek Killing Fields monument is very well done. One cannot help feel a solemnity while walking through. Signs remind us to keep quiet, but I didn’t observe any visitors behaving loudly, rather everyone was lost in their own thoughts. The audio tour walks us through the place, step by step. We are warned not to pick up bone fragments or cloth that may have emerged to the surface due to rains and time.

It didn’t really hit me until we got to the “killing tree.” The trunk is now covered with friendship bracelets that visitors have hung. When the site was found after Khmer Rouge was defeated, it was covered with the brains, blood, and bone of babies and infants that had their heads smashed against it. This was an efficient way to kill them, as it bordered the pit where their dead bodies were discarded.

The stupa is filled with thousands of skulls and large bones that have been unearthed. There are however, still many graves that have been preserved as they were found, still filled with skeletons of victims.

And yet there are beautiful bougainvillea and water lilies blooming on its grounds.

We then went to S21, the name of the Tuol Sleng torture center that was a former high school turned into a one-way out torture center. The only way out was death. Of the suspected 20,000 people tortured and killed there, 8 adults and 4 children survived.

One can’t help but ask, how did this happen? How was a regime able to take command of an entire country? It sounds like there were several things going on: the Cambodian people were exhausted after the Vietnam War and civil war. Many people of the country had fled to cities to escape the bombs and violence. The Khmer Rouge targeted the young, uneducated, hopeless, and bitter, promising them a better life. The “elite,” those who spoke more than one language, were educated, wore glasses, had soft hands, or were professionals were eliminated.

Interestingly, the goal of becoming a self-sustaining country ended up breeding paranoia and violence against each other. Within a year, many of the “cadre” were being thrown into the torture prisons. Some estimates put the number at 80% those who were exterminated in S21.

The German ambassador had this to say, when dedicating the monument to the victims of S21:

“It reminds us to be weary of people and regimes which ignore human dignity. No political goal or ideology, however promising, important, or desirable it may appear, can ever justify a political system, in which the dignity of the individual is not respected.”

Joachim Baron von Marschall, Germany’s ambassador to Cambodia at dedication of memorial at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh

Ellen and I have talked about how in 2015 we were in Berlin when Donald Trump was making his first run for the Whitehouse. The Germans thought it ludicrous. We said, “not so fast, we’re from Minnesota. We elected a wrestler to be our governor.” We studied up on how Adolf Hitler came to power. Ironically, here we are in Cambodia, as we see our government ignoring human dignity and trying to blow up our institutions. There are remarkable parallels to what is going on in the United States today.

I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.

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Ellen –

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Post card from Phnom Phen

It’s hard to write about places like these. They are very well done and we applaud the Cambodian people in honoring and preserving this horrendous history. It is much like the German people having to come to grips with their Nazi era atrocities. Sadly, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge took lesson suggestions on how to attempt to dominate. Eventually, like Hitler it all went wrong. He started by taking advantage of a war torn country side with economic strife, gathered hungry, uneducated young people and promised a better cooperative future. Blamed and killed all educated, professionals that might question or protest. Rounded them up, falsely accused them, jailed, tortured, and executed them leaving the country with only unskilled loyalists and worthless imaginary confessions. He bragged about taking the roots out with the trees, thus related children, infants and women were also tortured and murdered.

Why?

It was done with massive quickness. Lies and false promises were made to get people to leave their homes in Phenom Penn and walk into the country or prisons. Pol Pot’s reign lasted about 2.5 or more years. Then Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were recognized by Western countries and the UN as the legitimate government of Cambodia, a consequence of the Cold War.

I know I am generalizing this history and not being completely accurate so my history-fact relatives are a squirming reading this. My point is this keeps happening! Some megalomaniac who wants power preys on innocent people who want to believe! We don’t teach this in the US but in Germany and Cambodia all students have to visit these sites where atrocities took place in their country. We are not innocent. We have Little Big Horn and some other solemn places, but we don’t talk about why we did this to the Indian Nations. Greed, Racism, and power are powerful motivators, and being here all I can think about is how it is happening again. 

We met with some former state department people who said they had gotten the memo to report people who might be disloyal by secretly promoting DEI. Yikes, I better shut up!

Anyway it’s not a place for a lot of pictures by us. It was a long day , very moving, and a necessary journey.

 The killing Fields, Genocide museum and Cambodian National museum are well worth the trip and being in a huge city, but it has been exhausting so we have been taking time off to do nothing but catch up.

Next to Vietnam!