Learning from the past....
Today we try to add a little perspective to why we are here and the work we are doing. Our project this week sees us working with the Tabitha Foundation, where we will be building houses for 6 families.
Tabitha Foundation is one of many NGOs working in Cambodia and it is one we have been associated with since 2007. Before we can complete the build, we need to be part of an orientation session. Mr Heng provided us with this orientation as Janne (Tabitha Founder) is busy with the Nokor Tep Hospital now that it is open to provide services to the public. Many years ago, Mr Heng provided us with one his first orientations and to see the positive change in his confidence to run these sessions is fantastic.
To continue our journey of perspective, we travelled to Tuol Sleng (often referred to S21). Tuol Sleng is the Genocide Museum and was the prison camp in which many thousands of Cambodians were housed and tortured prior to them being taken to the Killing Fields to meet their deaths. Prior to the Khmer Rouge reign, Tuol Sleng was a secondary school within the city of Phnom Penh. It was quickly transformed into a centre of torture, where prisoners were forced to confess to crimes against Angkor. When the Vietnamese moved into Phnom Penh in 1979 to liberate the camp, only 7 survivors were found. 3 of these survivors (2 adults and 1 child at the time of liberation) were at Tuol Sleng today having written their memoirs.
We continued to Choeung Ek, or the Killing Fields as it is more commonly known. This is only one of the many 'killing fields' that existed during the Khmer Rouge reign. It is a chilling place to visit. The provision of an audio tour enables each of us to walk through the area at our own pace. We have the ability to listen to as little or as much of the information as we want. This allows us to be in "our own heads" and with our own thoughts as we listen.
To visit these places as an adult is confronting ..... to do it as a 17 or 18 year old is a challenge. Questions such as "How can this happen?", "How can humans do this to other humans?", and "Why don't we learn from the past?" are just some of the things that we talk about during the day. It is hard as an adult not to be able to answer these questions and also hard to see the impact of the day clearly etched on the faces of our students.
We are also asked "Why is this place here, why do they want to remember?". This leads to a conversation about dealing with trauma and the impact of generational trauma. We also talk about the role of education and the big role that places like S21 and Choeung Ek play, is to educate people. Through a level of education, perhaps we might reduce the chance of this recurring.
Thoughts from our younger team members:
"The Killing Fields and Genocide Museum were extremely sad visits yet also necessary, as they opened our young eyes to the wide and tragic world that once lay before us, with the devastating and dehmuanising effects of the Khmer Rouge. As we each walked through the grounds of the genocide museum and killing fields, listening to our audio devices, we each took something different from the experience, whether it be the disgusting and shocking realisation of humanity, as we learned the ways in which individuals turned on their own kind, or the gut wrenching reality of the nightmare that many experienced, followed by feelings of sadness, but also feelings of gratitude towards the world we had been brought up in. For we had not been exposed to the brutal and dark side that some humans possess and demonstrate in everyday life. Finishing the tours around the genocide museum and the killing fields, the group was left speechless as we contemplated the stories we had just heard and the evidence we had just seen, leaving everyone feeling devastated and sad, but also feeling as though we now had a mission to pass on what we had seen and learnt to the rest of the world in hopes to prevent such tragic events, but also ease the mourning of those still suffering to this day"
- Bella
"The Killing Fields and S21. The atrocities of Khmer Rouge hidden from western society are beyond the comprehension of humanity. The fact one person could torture another so cruelly under the reign of a single man's ideals brought tears to my eyes. The innocence of Cambodia's beautiful people was forever scarred with such and is easily seen through the eyes of many still today. As a privileged youth of Western society, it is easy to judge that certainly such an event may never occur again and experience frustration with the notion that Pol Pot, the leader of the genocide, held a position within the United Nations for nearly 20 years following. But the Cambodian genocide was a mere 30 years following the conclusion of Hitler's regime. Humanity proving that it may never learn form its mistakes, no matter our past. The significance of S21 and the Killing Fields serve this purpose forever more. One can only hope for peace in the aftermath of humanity's own horror"
- Jessie-Rose
"Today, walking and listening to the information and facts that had happened in the 'killing fields' was a huge eye opener to me. Seeing in real life what people went through and how there was no possible way to stop the behaviour from happening really made me feel great sadness and disgust at the events that happened 40 years ago. Hearing the stories made me feel sick, the fact that humans can turn on each other like they did demonstrates that "humans are the worst type of animals".
Seeing the thousands of skulls just stacked up metres high made the experience seem so much more real and more heartbreaking."
- Zazney
"In 2013 I went first to S21. It was very confronting to see the atrocities that had happened and what they had done to other human beings. The Killing Fields was also a real shock seeing all the skulls and bones, but what really upset me was the tree where the babies were killed.
I would like to give a comparable example to what happened at S21 and the Killing Fields. In 2015 I did a tour to Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland. This was very confronting to see behind glass, 8 tons of human hair - yes, 8 tons! Also behind glass, little kid's shoes through to adult shoes and suit cases with people's names and dates on them. Really confronting was the gas chamber. Birkenau was just as confronting. People had to sleep in a toilet block - a long slab of concrete with holes in it. This is what was done by the Germans to the Jews.
To come back to S21 and the Killing Fields in 2019 brought back to me what I had seen in 2013. It was still very confronting, but the saddest thing is that it is still happening today, but in different countries."
- Ross
Tabitha Foundation is one of many NGOs working in Cambodia and it is one we have been associated with since 2007. Before we can complete the build, we need to be part of an orientation session. Mr Heng provided us with this orientation as Janne (Tabitha Founder) is busy with the Nokor Tep Hospital now that it is open to provide services to the public. Many years ago, Mr Heng provided us with one his first orientations and to see the positive change in his confidence to run these sessions is fantastic.
To continue our journey of perspective, we travelled to Tuol Sleng (often referred to S21). Tuol Sleng is the Genocide Museum and was the prison camp in which many thousands of Cambodians were housed and tortured prior to them being taken to the Killing Fields to meet their deaths. Prior to the Khmer Rouge reign, Tuol Sleng was a secondary school within the city of Phnom Penh. It was quickly transformed into a centre of torture, where prisoners were forced to confess to crimes against Angkor. When the Vietnamese moved into Phnom Penh in 1979 to liberate the camp, only 7 survivors were found. 3 of these survivors (2 adults and 1 child at the time of liberation) were at Tuol Sleng today having written their memoirs.
We continued to Choeung Ek, or the Killing Fields as it is more commonly known. This is only one of the many 'killing fields' that existed during the Khmer Rouge reign. It is a chilling place to visit. The provision of an audio tour enables each of us to walk through the area at our own pace. We have the ability to listen to as little or as much of the information as we want. This allows us to be in "our own heads" and with our own thoughts as we listen.
To visit these places as an adult is confronting ..... to do it as a 17 or 18 year old is a challenge. Questions such as "How can this happen?", "How can humans do this to other humans?", and "Why don't we learn from the past?" are just some of the things that we talk about during the day. It is hard as an adult not to be able to answer these questions and also hard to see the impact of the day clearly etched on the faces of our students.
We are also asked "Why is this place here, why do they want to remember?". This leads to a conversation about dealing with trauma and the impact of generational trauma. We also talk about the role of education and the big role that places like S21 and Choeung Ek play, is to educate people. Through a level of education, perhaps we might reduce the chance of this recurring.
Thoughts from our younger team members:
"The Killing Fields and Genocide Museum were extremely sad visits yet also necessary, as they opened our young eyes to the wide and tragic world that once lay before us, with the devastating and dehmuanising effects of the Khmer Rouge. As we each walked through the grounds of the genocide museum and killing fields, listening to our audio devices, we each took something different from the experience, whether it be the disgusting and shocking realisation of humanity, as we learned the ways in which individuals turned on their own kind, or the gut wrenching reality of the nightmare that many experienced, followed by feelings of sadness, but also feelings of gratitude towards the world we had been brought up in. For we had not been exposed to the brutal and dark side that some humans possess and demonstrate in everyday life. Finishing the tours around the genocide museum and the killing fields, the group was left speechless as we contemplated the stories we had just heard and the evidence we had just seen, leaving everyone feeling devastated and sad, but also feeling as though we now had a mission to pass on what we had seen and learnt to the rest of the world in hopes to prevent such tragic events, but also ease the mourning of those still suffering to this day"
- Bella
"The Killing Fields and S21. The atrocities of Khmer Rouge hidden from western society are beyond the comprehension of humanity. The fact one person could torture another so cruelly under the reign of a single man's ideals brought tears to my eyes. The innocence of Cambodia's beautiful people was forever scarred with such and is easily seen through the eyes of many still today. As a privileged youth of Western society, it is easy to judge that certainly such an event may never occur again and experience frustration with the notion that Pol Pot, the leader of the genocide, held a position within the United Nations for nearly 20 years following. But the Cambodian genocide was a mere 30 years following the conclusion of Hitler's regime. Humanity proving that it may never learn form its mistakes, no matter our past. The significance of S21 and the Killing Fields serve this purpose forever more. One can only hope for peace in the aftermath of humanity's own horror"
- Jessie-Rose
"Today, walking and listening to the information and facts that had happened in the 'killing fields' was a huge eye opener to me. Seeing in real life what people went through and how there was no possible way to stop the behaviour from happening really made me feel great sadness and disgust at the events that happened 40 years ago. Hearing the stories made me feel sick, the fact that humans can turn on each other like they did demonstrates that "humans are the worst type of animals".
Seeing the thousands of skulls just stacked up metres high made the experience seem so much more real and more heartbreaking."
- Zazney
"In 2013 I went first to S21. It was very confronting to see the atrocities that had happened and what they had done to other human beings. The Killing Fields was also a real shock seeing all the skulls and bones, but what really upset me was the tree where the babies were killed.
I would like to give a comparable example to what happened at S21 and the Killing Fields. In 2015 I did a tour to Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland. This was very confronting to see behind glass, 8 tons of human hair - yes, 8 tons! Also behind glass, little kid's shoes through to adult shoes and suit cases with people's names and dates on them. Really confronting was the gas chamber. Birkenau was just as confronting. People had to sleep in a toilet block - a long slab of concrete with holes in it. This is what was done by the Germans to the Jews.
To come back to S21 and the Killing Fields in 2019 brought back to me what I had seen in 2013. It was still very confronting, but the saddest thing is that it is still happening today, but in different countries."
- Ross
Comments
be lived in peace.