S-21

I went down to get the hot water and, luckily, was recognized by the kitchen staff. This made the request easier as they remembered me from yesterday. After coffee, we grabbed 2 yogurts from the guesthouse and went outside to find San, the tuk-tuk driver who met us at the bus. We had arranged for him to pick us up this morning and take us to the Genocide Museum and the Killing Field. We had our souvenir box with us and instructed him to first take us to the post office. At the post office, a woman weighed the box, 7 kilograms (about 15 pounds) and told us it would be $197.00 US dollars to mail it home. No way in hell that was going to happen, so we took our box and left.

It was a short drive to the Genocide Museum, Tuol Sleng Prison (aka S-21). Once a school, the Khmer Rouge turned it into a prison and interrogation/torture center. We paid our $2.00 to enter and walked to the first cell block, Building A (sitting perpendicular to the street), past the tombs of the last 14 people killed (shot) just seconds before the prison was liberated, their bodies found warm and bleeding. Inside the first room, previously a class room, was a metal frame bed. On top of the bed was a bar with chain for shackling the ankles and a metal box, which held a battery used for electric shock, and there were round bolts running down either side of the room (to chain prisoners to). This was a 3 story building and the first 2 floors were lined with torture rooms such as this, the 3rd floor consisting of 3 large holding areas. Men, women, and children were held and tortured.

G- This is so disturbing it makes me want to puke.

P- Why are the floor tiles so black?

G- Stained from blood.

P- OMG!

G- The photo on the wall is haunting. Look at the blood splatters on the ceiling.

P- These rooms are just so eerie. It's almost as if you can feel the pain of the people who were tortured here.

G- I cannot fathom how one human being can do this to another. It sickens me.

We walked through each room, each building, in utter silence, with a weight in our hearts that words cannot express. Building B's (parallel to the street, perpendicular to Building A) rooms were lined with photos of the 14,000 + men, women & children whose lives were cut short in this place. As each person was brought to the prison, they were numbered and photographed. Maybe the Khmer lunatics learned this cataloging system from the Nazis.


P- Looking into the eyes of these people is very disturbing.

G- You can clearly see the pain in their eyes; some looked resigned while others look defiant.

P- They look terrified.

G- That is surely to be expected. Look at these boys. He looks no older than 9 or 10.

P- I wonder if they knew what was about to happen to them.

G- I don't think they knew exactly, but they had to know it wasn't good.

P- And these people are here because they were teachers, or just educated, or just a wife or child of a teacher or educated person. You can understand that they'd imprison prior government officials who opposed the Khmer Rouge, but anyone with an education? That seems crazy.

G- Maybe it wasn't as easy to manipulate and control them, so they had to be killed.

P- But tortured? They tortured them to get them to confess to things they didn't even do.

G- No one said it was rational. Tyrants are seldom rational.

The 3rd floor of Building B contained an art exhibit by an artist who painted the portraits of some of the victims. They were large, with vibrant colors, and equally as haunting as the photographs. Building C (next to/parallel to Building B) was enclosed in barbed wire to keep the prisoners from escaping or jumping to their deaths to escape torture. The classrooms in this building contained shabbily constructed individual cells, a bolt in the floor next to the door to attach the leg iron/shackles. Those on the first 2 floors were made of bricks and those on the 3rd floor were made of wood. They were exceptionally narrow.

Building D (perpendicular to the street and Buildings B & C) housed the photos and stories of the 7 people who survived internment in S-21. Also, this building housed torture devices such as hoes, rakes, battery containers, whips, a press/vice for smashing various body parts, a large pot that the victim's head, his body hanging by the ankles from a chain, would be lowered into for drowning, and a large box that the victim's feet and hands would be shackled to as it was slowly filled with water to drown them.

G- So many people will disagree with me, but in my heart I don't believe people are basically good; that at their cores, most people are really good. I think every person on earth is good and bad and every day each person struggles to keep a balance, but most often bad wins.

P- I agree with that. There is good in everyone, but overall, people are only out for themselves.

G- There is too much evidence to prove that people chose bad over good. There is a plethora of examples in history, and you just have to read the paper everyday. I'm not talking about enormous levels like the Nazis or the Khmer Rouge, I'm just talking about everyday decisions that people make when no one is looking.

P- The list goes on and on. I totally get it. It is so much easier to be bad than good, that's why bad wins too often.

G- The even more terrifying part is how easy it is for a supremely evil SOB to get the mindless sheep to jump on his bandwagon and support him or carry out his evil plans. Case in point, Pol Pot. It does not take many people in charge to carry out a crazy, evil, murderous scheme when so many sheep are so willing just to follow along. As long as there is something, no matter how small, in it for them. Blech!



P- The craziness just keeps happening over and over. Let's go. I can't take anymore of this place.