I remember in middle school and high school learning about
the Holocaust in every history class. It almost got to the point where I was
sick of hearing about it. I would hate that’s the way I felt about it, but it
was just disgusting to me and I didn’t want to think about it so much. It was
so engraved in my mind.
Even though I knew so much about the Holocaust — the genocide
in Germany during World War Two, I never knew there were other things like that
going on in the world. No teacher told me about the genocides in Africa, Asia,
or even America. Not that it was up to my teachers to tell me about everything.
Yesterday we went to the Killing Fields Memorial in Phnom Penh. I had never heard about the genocide in Cambodia, ever. It’s so crazy to
me how I could have missed something like this. How could no one ever tell me
about this, why didn’t I ever research these kind of things?
What hurts the most about this genocide and the stories heard
is that it was Cambodians killing other Cambodians. These people spoke the same
language and lived the same life. There was a rise against the upper class.
Teachers, lawyers, doctors, people with soft hands, glasses, those who were
more educated who were sent to work, tortured, or die. The Khmer Rouge wanted
everyone to be equal.
Most were forced to leave their homes and told that the US
was going to bomb the city. They walked for miles and miles not knowing where
they were going or what they’d be doing. They were forced to watch death happen
before their eyes, forced to see their people turn on them.
There aren’t many older in Cambodia anymore. A whole
generation is nearly gone.
We walked through the memorial where bodies had once laid and
bones still remained. We walked past trees that were once used to smash babies
heads and to play loud music so no one knew what was really happening.
I was listening to details on the audio tour, enjoying time
by myself and listening to the stories and testimonies of survivors.
After everything happened the The Killings finally ended, the
guy Pol Pot who started it all was never caught. He continued to reign in The
Khmer Rouge for 20 years. He was finally put on house arrest and died a year
later. Supposedly he lived a good life, married again and saw his grandchildren
grow up. That’s ridiculous, especially because most of his victims didn’t live above the age of two!
Cambodia isn’t the only country with a genocide. It’s all over the world. It happened in America too. When? The Native Americans… Thanksgiving isn’t all what it’s cracked up to be.
