We arrived in Cambodia last Sunday, and one of our first initiations was to visit the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields on Monday afternoon. It's difficult for me to put this experience into words. It was very emotional and disturbing, but a needed and important thing to do.
For one thing, the museum is actually set up in the school-turned-prison where over 10,000 people (not counting at least 2,000 children) were detained, tortured, and killed. Blood stains cover the floors of rooms that boast only a metal bed frame and various instruments of torture.
The Cambodian genocide is one of the most documented acts of violence ever recorded. The Khmer Rouge kept detailed records and pictures of every prisoner to come to Toul Sleng, as well as the types of torture they used, even photographing their dead prisoners before putting them in mass graves.
Although I might return to the museum, I'm pretty sure I won't be going back to the Killing Fields memorial. There was something disturbing about being there; mass graves recently excavated, a memorial filled many stories high with skulls, watching another visitor unearth a bone on t he pathway. To be in such a place was very humbling and I felt I had no right to be there.
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