A Tough Day in Cambodia

It had always been our plan to visit, as a family, both the Killing Fields and the Museum of Genocide in Phnom Penh, which relate the horrific events surrounding the Pol Pot regime (1975 to 1979). I can hear now, the voices of many of our friends gently inquiring as to the wisdom of such a decision (Paulette’s voice-not so gentle). However, after being warned by our guide in Siem Reap and reading a bit more about it, Melissa and I decided that the kids might not be up to it. So, Melissa graciously offered to let me go on my own. Yes, we can exercise parental judgment from time to time.

Melissa, Maya and I had all been reading memoirs of accounts of life during the Pol Pot reign. We read “First, They Killed My Father” and “Stay Alive, My Son.” Both were extraordinarily moving accounts of the horrors of life under the Khmer Rouge. I strongly recommend both books, in particular, the first one. While, of course, familiar with the name Pol Pot and the evils of the Khmer Rouge, my knowledge of this episode in human history was sadly limited. It has been eye-opening to learn a bit about this cataclysmic event.

It is not inaccurate to say that during the four years that the Khmer Rouge ruled the country, the Cambodian people were enslaved in hell. In April 1975, as the Khmer Rouge soldiers marched into Phnom Penh, they were initially greeted as saviors having brought to an end years of civil war and bloodshed. Incidentally, it’s not clear how much credit that they deserved for that. However, shortly after marching into Phnom Penh, they ordered that the city be vacated. Think about that. Phnom Penh was not some small backwater city, even in 1975. It was a huge and thriving, relatively cosmopolitan city. Pol Pot and his henchmen, adhering to a particularly radical form of Marxism, believed that the only way to create a true communist state was by rapidly establishing a purely agrarian society. Therefore, all city dwellers called “new people” were sent to the countryside to become farmers and to be “reeducated.” It is this same zealousness that ultimately led the Khmer Rouge to conclude that all of those with education were not susceptible to “reeducation” and were risks to the revolution and should, therefore, be killed. Imagine the impact on a country of murdering all of the doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers and anyone else with any education. Indeed, the Khmer Rouge killed those with glasses, believing they were indicia of education. Breathtaking, not just in its wickedness but also in its colossal stupidity. While the numbers are not entirely clear, by 1979, the Khmer Rouge had murdered approximately 2 million people and another 1 million had fled. To put this in perspective, this reduced the population of the country by between 40% and 50%.

It was with this admittedly limited historical knowledge that I visited the Killing Fields and the Museum of Genocide. I hired a Tuk Tuk driver to accompany me for the afternoon. First, the Killing Fields. Located a few kilometers outside of Phnom Penh, it is a fairly desolate place. After paying a dollar or two to enter, you are immediately accosted by a person offering to be your tour guide. I hired a guide for $5. His English was not great, but it would have been really hard to piece it all together without a guide. The first thing that you see is a three story monument, reminiscent of a small Buddhist temple. As you walk in, you immediately see hundreds and hundreds and skulls. There’s something oddly banal about seeing skulls. Skulls, at least for me, do not conjure up horror. They conjure up Halloween and science class. However, my guide pointed out to me the various cracks and indentations on the skulls that were the cause of death. He explained to me, and I had also read, that, to save money, the Khmer Rouge would not “waste” ammunition for these killing sprees, instead opting to use blunt or sharp objects to bludgeon or stab their victims to death. He later told me that they also used the jagged edge of palm leaves to decapitate victims. I felt these jagged edges and while somewhat sharp, this would not have been a quick death. Initially, you see only the hundreds of skulls, but then when you look down, you see the discarded clothes of the victims. This was very reminiscent of Holocaust exhibits that I have seen. The exhibit is a square room and you walk around the square, but largely you see the same thing from every angle, acres of skulls and the victims’ clothing. You can only exit from the same side that you enter, so once you start the walk inside, you’re stuck. It’s very hot in there. Just as I was about to exit, there was some hold up, and I felt myself momentarily panicking that I was never going to get out of there.

After finally getting out of the exhibit, my guide walked me through the Killing Fields. These Killing Fields are one of many throughout Cambodia. Over 80,000 people had died at these particular fields. Throughout the fields, you could see deep indentations where bodies, some still alive, had been dumped. He explained that some were found naked, some were decapitated. Babies were found dead, having been smashed against trees like some sick sport from hell. The events are still so recent that when it rains bones and clothes of the victims are revealed and are just left there as potent reminders. After my tour ended, I walked a bit around the fields conjuring up images from the past. Imagining the horror of being buried alive under a pile of dead or mostly dead bodies, or the horror of the mother watching her infant killed for sport, and on and on.

I then left and headed to the Tuol Sleng, Museum of Genocide. This former high school, located in the heart of Phnom Penh, was converted into a prison and torture chamber. From 1975 to 1979, approximately 17,000 political prisoners, mostly ordinary citizens, but also senior officials deemed to be traitors, were killed. As with the Killing Fields, I hired a guide for $5.00. The guide related to me her own story, as a seven year old, of fleeing to Vietnam with her mother and sister. Everyone has a story. It seems that if you survived the Khmer Rouge siege, you have an extraordinary story of determination and survival. No one received a free ride. The museum is a grim place, largely unchanged from its former use. I saw the prisons where they held the prisoners. The prisons were smaller than most closets. They didn’t have doors as they chained the prisoners into their cells. The guide showed the various instruments of torture used by the Khmer Rouge. There were pictures of the countless victims as well as the monsters who tortured them. However, the fact that the whole place is largely unchanged from 1979 is what gives it its ominous sense of horror.

After the tour was over, I continued to explore the building. On the upper floor, there’s a very interesting photo exhibit of former Khmer Rouge soldiers. Each display contains three elements: a picture of the man or woman as a Khmer Rouge soldier, a picture of him or her in their current lives, and a quote explaining why he or she was with the Khmer Rouge. The exhibit was very successful in conjuring up a variety of feelings. On the one hand, you see these severe photos of the subjects in their Khmer Rouge uniforms and then you see these pictures of them in very ordinary activities, fishing, taking care of their children, etc. The quotes are tough to take and eerily reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Comments such as (and I’m paraphrasing), “I was just following orders.” “If I didn’t do what they said, I would be killed.” “I didn’t do anything, they should go after the really bad people.” And so on and so on.

As a Jew, it was impossible for me to not compare the horrors suffered by the Cambodian people with the horrors suffered by the Jews in the Holocaust. Both Melissa and I wrestled with the ultimately pointless question of which was worse the horrors visited upon the Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge or those suffered by the Jews under the Nazis. However, I got to thinking about this Jewish tendency to assert that the Holocaust is the worst genocide in human history. Indeed, Jews take an almost proprietary interest in the words “genocide” and “holocaust.” It’s as if the “reward” for thousands of years of discrimination in various heinous forms is that we have the right to declare that the Holocaust was the worst catastrophe in human history and everything else pales by comparison. I certainly grew up thinking that way. Much of my reading about the Cambodian genocide suggests the same parochial thinking on the part of Cambodians. Indeed, I bristled at an exhibit at the Killing Fields that stated, as if undisputable fact, that the cruelty suffered at the hands of the Khmer Rouge was greater than Nazi cruelty. I guess this is merely a symptom of human behavior to assume that one’s own tragedies are greater than all others. However, putting aside parochialism, I think the main risk of this kind of thinking is that it permits us to ignore other atrocities, whether in Darfur, Rwanda, N. Korea, etc., because such atrocities, while bad, were certainly not as bad as “our” atrocities, whoever the “our” may be.

Certainly, it was a tough but stirring day.