The Museum of Suffering

Posted on 29. Mar, 2011 by Steph in Asia, Destinations

Traveling in South East Asia can be a lot of things: fun, beautiful, delicious. But sometimes, it can also be a very dark place. The latter half of the twentieth century was not so kind to mainland South East Asia, and it’s impossible to ignore the repercussions of this.

Over the past few months I’ve learned a lot about the American War in Vietnam, and the Secret War in Laos but nothing was able to prepare me for the carnage associated with Cambodia. In just a 4 year span between 1975 and 1979 over 1.5 million Cambodians (a quarter of the countries population) were killed by their own tyrannical government. The ultra-communist Khmer Rouge, sought to destroy everything modern and turn Cambodia into a giant agrarian collective. They killed every intellectual, person of wealth or political official, evacuated all cities and basically propelled the country back to the Stone Age until they were overthrown by the Vietnamese.

Aside from watching the movie The Killing Fields, in high school, I knew very little about this dark chapter of history. I think it’s impossible to visit Cambodia and not be informed about this, so my first few days in Phnom Penh were dedicated to learning about this time period.

The Killing Fields

There are a number of sites in Cambodia known as the Killing Fields. They are all mass graveyards where thousands of people were executed- usually beaten to death to save valuable bullets. The most famous of these fields is Choeung Elk, about 17km outside of Phnom Penh, which is now a memorial site.

The first thing you see upon arriving is the Buddhist stupa which towers over the field. As you get closer you realize that this monument is filled to the top with human skulls. I studied evolutionary biology in college, and I’ve handled human skulls before, but nothing could have prepared me for this mountain of bones. Many of the skulls have been damaged or smashed in. They stare out, eyelessly bearing witness.

What is left now in the killing fields are a series of mass graves, some have been excavated, others are merely labeled pits. After heavy rains bone fragments and teeth are known to rise up out of the dead land. It hadn’t rained in months, but even so I could see dozens of scraps of clothing, reaching out of the earth like disembodied hands.

The oddest thing about Choeung Elk the eery peacefulness of the place. There are beautiful trees and a pleasant algae covered lake. It was a beautiful day and the entire area seemed calm. Nearby their was a school where we could hear children singing. The juxtaposition was epically creepy.

S-21

The next day I visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, in downtown Phnom Penh. It may not have been the best idea to cram both of these sites into a 24 hour period, but I didn’t have much time in the city and very much wanted to see both.

Tuol Sleng, or S-21, was once a high school, haphazardly converted into a Khmer Rouge prison. It’s new role was primarily the gruesome torture and execution of political prisoners. The government’s idea of what constituted a political prisoner was pretty liberal- men, women, children and even babies were imprisoned here, over 20,000 people total. Of all of the people who entered the prison only seven walked out alive. Yes, that is correct, seven. Most others met their ends in the killing fields.

If the Killing Fields were heartbreaking, S-21 was absolutely horrifying. It’s a horror movie, a place of nightmares. The buildings have been preserved basically as they were in 1979. Large classrooms with metal beds and torture instruments made up one building. Another has been subdivided into prison cells the size of coat closets, dark and claustrophobic. Barbed wire lined the outside, a sign told me it was to prevent prisoners from committing suicide.

It’s hard to even conceive of the amount of misery that occurred inside these walls, but there are pictures to help. The Khmer Rouge took mug shots of every person who was incarcerated here, these blown up shots are now posted on chalkboards all through the museum. Walls and walls of faces, young and old, thin and beautiful, scared and tough. It adds a heartbreaking touch of humanity to his harsh place.

One thing that made my experience almost unbearably human: a tour group of elderly Cambodians touring the museum at the same pace as myself. By my math, anyone over the age of 35 must have some memories of that time period, these men and women, in their 60′s or 70′s, must have a lot of burden to carry. I watched them explore the museum. One woman grimly pointed to a chalkboard photo of a man on a bed, being tortured, then at the floor. The tile pattern is the same.

In the corner of the room were some old stone busts, which must have decorated the prison in earlier times. As I examined them a man walked over, pointed at one and said “Pol Pot.” He then very swiftly and very passionately kicked the bust in the head, before walking away.

This got me, more than anything else in this museum of suffering. I started to feel intensely claustrophobic as the feelings closed in on me. I had to leave, to go sit in the open air of the courtyard, feel sunshine and watch the birds. Watch some life happening.

Later

It can be exhausting you know, the memorials of such suffering. I’ve been to more then my share of them these past six months: the Hiroshima Peace Park, the American War Museum, the Hanoi Hilton, Phonsavan. Every one of these places brings up deep and troubling emotions, particularly as an American. After a day of bearing witness, I find myself physically exhausted. I can’t even write about it; all I want to do is watch How I Met Your Mother reruns and forget that the world exists.

Nonetheless, I think that these, less pleasant days of travel, are so important. It’s essentially to be aware of the world around you, the context of every country you visit- and you can’t just get it from Wikipedia entries. Staring at those forgotten scraps of cloth, tearing their way out of the ground, I think I better understand the Cambodia of today- a place that is troubled but very optimistic. I’ve never seen more smiling people than I have in this country. And, in the same way that knowing someones secrets makes you feel closer to them, I think I now love Cambodia a little more.

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Tags: cambodia, history

21 Responses to “The Museum of Suffering”

Garreth
29. Mar, 2011
These places are always extremely tough to visit. It was the same when I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau a few summers ago in Poland.
It’s hard to contemplate people can be this evil to other people especially so many innocent people. It’s tough to visit these places but they serve a purpose in reminding people of the tragedies of the past and hopefully act as a deterrent for similar thinking re-appearing in the future.
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Monica
29. Mar, 2011
What an awful place. I found it really tough when I visited Cambodia too and went to the memorial places.
One thing I found really hard in Cambodia was seeing all the children who have no one to take care of them. A whole generation was just wiped out so there were so many kids living on the street.
I like your comment about the Killing Fields being eerily calm. I noticed that too. I felt as though I should have been tense but it was actually a strangely peaceful place.
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- Steph
  31. Mar, 2011
  A lot of street kids running around with no shoes or selling bracelets. Very very tough.
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Beth Nagengast
29. Mar, 2011
Wow-I want to cry reading this. How horrible.
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Katie
29. Mar, 2011
This post gives me chills. Cambodia tops my list of places to visit.
I recently read ‘First They Killed my Father’ by Loung Ung and ‘When Broken Glass Floats: Growing up under the Khmer Rouge’ by Chanrithy Him. Both are equally gripping, eye-opening, heartbreaking books, and give each girl’s account of her time growing up in Cambodia, and ever since then I’ve been hungering to learn more.
It stuns me how little people actually know about this time in the world’s history, and like you said, I think it’s so important to be aware and informed of the places we want to visit.
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- Steph
  29. Mar, 2011
  I also read First They Killed My Father a couple of months ago and it was really great for putting everything in Cambodia in context.
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Catie
29. Mar, 2011
After watching The Killing Fields the idea of visiting Cambodia both intrigued and scared me, and seeing pictures you’ve taken gives me the same feelings. I completely agree with your sentiments that sites such as these give the traveler a deeper understanding of the culture of a place. As difficult as the experience is, witnessing secondhand the terrible experiences of past generations allows those events to carry a legacy through the memories of the visitors.
Hopefully this post inspires others to dig deeper into the culture of the country they are visiting-as you put so well, knowing someone’s secrets makes you feel closer to them.
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Amanda
29. Mar, 2011
As Katie said, this post gave me chills. It’s inconceivable to me to think that everyone over the age of 35 would have suffered through this horrible stage in Cambodia’s history. Usually, atrocities like this happened long enough ago that only the oldest members of society remember what it was like to live through it. Not so in Cambodia.
Reading this, the man kicking the bust of Pol Pot was the most telling and moving for me, too.
This kind of stuff is definitely tough to swallow. But, like you said, it’s so important for us to visit these sorts of places and become aware of the world outside of our own safe little bubbles.
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- Steph
  29. Mar, 2011
  A huge amount of Cambodians suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder because of what they went to. In a nation with virtually no psychologists that is a BIG deal. I think that the trauma these people went through is going to be reverberating through the generations for a long long time.
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Ali
29. Mar, 2011
This brought tears to my eyes. I’m planning on going to Cambodia so I’ve just barely started reading up, and really only my Southeast Asia Lonely Planet guidebook. I can’t imagine what it must’ve felt like to be at those two places, especially seeing people who lived through that horrible period of history. Thanks for sharing this with us.
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Vivian
30. Mar, 2011
These places are reminders of the harrowing circumstances people had to go through, struggling to make their country a better place for their children. It great they put up something like this, so those who suffered and who caused them are never forgotte.
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- Steph
  31. Mar, 2011
  I agree, it’s so important to bare witness ot these things to ensure they never happen again.
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Jaime
30. Mar, 2011
Gosh I have heard of this place but have never read about it. I actually have tears right now. Some of the things the human species are able to do I can not comprehend. Stuff like this angers me like crazy. We know people just want to be happy so why can’t governments around the world just understand that. It’s going to be very interesting when I get to SEAsia.
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- Steph
  31. Mar, 2011
  Yeah I can’t envision the kind of rationalization government leaders have to KILL THEIR OWN PEOPLE like this. It’s mind boggling.
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Sasha
30. Mar, 2011
Travelling often seems like a dream, like life on another planet but it is the experience of visiting places such as these that really bring you back down to earth and too reality. The world can be a very cruel place!!! I think it’s important as travellers that we do visit these places, they help us to understand what shaped the people of today.
I remember visiting the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, memories of visiting there will never leave me. For days after visiting I couldn’t get that feeling of horror out of my head, thinking about how those people suffered mentally and physically was an eye-opening, sobering and extremely emotional experience. One statement that will always stick in my head is what the tour guide told us the prisoners got told when they entered the camp.”(guard would point at the gate) That’s where you entered, (then point at the chimney) and that’s where you will leave.” I can’t imagine the thoughts that must have traumatized the prisoners from that day!
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- Steph
  31. Mar, 2011
  I’ve never visited a concentration camp but I think it probably is a similar experience. For me it was the barbed wire so that the prisoners couldn’t even kill themselves that really got me. I think it’s similar to what you said- that lack of hope must have been devastating.
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Wandering Trader's Travels
31. Mar, 2011
S-21 and The Killing fields are really very eerie. It’s tragic how much suffering the Cambodians went through… and in a 4-year time frame too! Great write. Heartbreaking, true. But very informative.
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- Steph
  31. Mar, 2011
  Thanks. It’s hard to imagine that many people dying in such a short span of time. Truly monstrous.
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Bluegreen Kirk
31. Mar, 2011
Yeah though I love the history I dont think this is a place I would travel to for a vacation. I love the post and the photos however when I think of a vacation(which i dont get many days to travel) I dont want to be sad for my travels and this is just horrible and heartbreaking.
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- Steph
  31. Mar, 2011
  The thing is I really do recommend Cambodia as a vacation spot! It has a lot to offer besides bad memories: Angkor Wat and gorgeous beaches for starters. And goodness knows they need the support.
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Dalene - Hecktic Travels
06. Apr, 2011
This really did give me the chills too. What an incredible lesson travel teaches – humility, compassion, and that our bad day in North America is NOTHING in compared to what other people in the world have to endure. Like you said, I’m not sure that it is really possible to digest all of this without seeing it in person.
We hope to visit Europe soon, and I feel like I already need to mentally prepare myself for visiting such things as the concentration camps…
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The Museum of Suffering

The Killing Fields

S-21

21 Responses to “The Museum of Suffering”

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