grandma's wanderlust: A visit to S21 and the killing fields, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

One of the reason I came to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, was to visit S21 and the killing fields.

Taking a two day slow boat from Ho Chi Minh (formerly Saigon), Vietnam, I arrived not only in the capital, but also the sex capital of Cambodia.

Next morning I took a tour to S21 and the killing fields.

S21 was a public school that during the Khmer Rouge under the regime of Pol Pot, was turn, from 1975 to 1979, into a torture, interrogation and execution center, .

Today S-21 Prison is known as the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide.

They kept records and pictures off all the prisoners that enter the interrogation center. They also described the type of torture used on each prisoner. So the Khmer Rouge could see that their orders had been carried out and how.

Those manuals, some of the torture instrument and the shackles and chains used, are on exhibition at the museum.

14,000 people enter the center and only 7 survived. 5 babies and two boys. The two boys are old man now and they sit every day in the garden and talk with the people coming to see the prison.

The prisoners were kept at the prison until they confessed. After those atrocious tortures, starvation and loss of hope, I guess anybody would confess to anything they wanted you to confess.

Once they confess, the prisoners were sent to what it is known as the killing fields.

There were many killing fields all over Cambodia.

As the prisoners arrived, they were killed right away and thrown into mass graves.

They had loud speaker playing music, so the neighboring farmers would not hear the screams. They also threw lye in the graves so they won’t smell the rotting corpses.

Bullets were expensive, so they used to hit them to death with bamboo, or shovels, or anything else they had on hand.

The babies were thrown against a tree or thrown into the air and catch with a bayonet. There are pictures of soldiers having a game of this.

Between all the killing fields, more than two million women, men and children were killed. And when you have into consideration that Cambodia had 8 million people, you are talking about 25% of the population.

It was a terrible place and you can feel it in the air as you walk through the prison and the fields. Nevertheless, it is a place we all must see, as it is part of history.

Because I did not have enough suffering seeing all these atrocities, that night I watched the movie “The Killings Fields” (1984). With Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor, John Malkovich, Julian Sands and Craig T. Nelson. Directed by Roland Joffé.

The movie narrates the experiences of two journalists: Cambodian Dith Pran and American Sydney Schanberg. It tell how they were trapped during Pol Pot's bloody cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million "undesirable" civilians.

Excellent movie, I saw it when it came out, but today I wanted to see it again. And I am glad I did.

Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide

The square box was the "toilet"

The Gallows were used to hang prisoners up side down while being torture. When they passed out, they were dip into the planter fill with filthy water.