The first full day I was in Cambodia I went to visit Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. Toul Sleng was a former high school that was used by the Khmer Rouge for imprisonment, interrogation, and execution of prisoners from the Phnom Penh area. Many thousands of people were tortured and executed here.
The site now is quiet, the old classrooms are the where torture took place are empty now.
You walk from room to room and view the beds and shackles used by the torturers.
While most of the bodies of victims here were transported about 15 KM out of town to what is now known as The Killing Fields, some were buried on site. Some of the skulls and bones are displayed at the museum.
Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge were meticulous record keepers. They carefully recorded the names, vital statistics and reputed crimes of all their victims. They also took pictures of everyone, sometimes before and after torture. Many of these pictures have been posted on boards at Toul Sleng. It is these pictures that finally provides a point of connection for the visitor, a sense of beginning to understand the human cost of the Cambodian Genocide.
The sight is absolutely heartbreaking at times.
After touring Toul Sleng what do you come away with? You certianly don't come away with answers. I don't feel in any sense that I understand the Khmer Rouge better, or the causes of the genocide any better. If anything you understand it less well. Toul Sleng doesn't have A Meaning. There is no great wisdom to be gained here. And unfortunately, I don't even believe that the presence of places like this or Auschwitz, or sites of the Rwandan Genocide even prevent genocide from happening again. So is there any reason to visit a place like Toul Sleng? After having reflected on it I think, yes. When I come again, I will come not to learn anything, but to spend time with the spirits of the dead. I think that it is important that we remember the dead, that we sit with them, commune with them, and remind them that they have not been forgotten. That is what I learned at Toul Sleng, and what I will put in practice when I come again.
I think this is a place where we silently and with the respect not accorded to them in life, that we tell the spirits of the victims we personally will not forget. When we change the world, we do this one person at a time and the place to stop a genocide is to start with our self. By saying no to making those choices, our choice will in turn influence the universe of people around us to make their personal choice. Over time worlds are then changed. You changed me by this post. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, the wall is heartbreaking.
ReplyDeleteM, G, thanks for the comments.
ReplyDeletethis was a good post brother. I learned a lot that I did not know. I would not forget the victims but I don't believe that I could ever visit there more than once.
ReplyDelete