Day 6

This morning we managed to actually leave the hotel on time heading for a 10 minute bus ride to the Royal Palace.  The grounds of the Palace are very green and well looked after with many different buildings to suit the events that take place there.  The King, single and 62, was at home in the Palace today, but he wasn’t available for to meet with us, so we just enjoyed walking around the Palace (in the heat).

From there we took another short bus ride to S21 – it was originally a school until the Pol Pot Regime where it was converted into a Prison.  17,000 prisoners passed through this place on the way to their deaths at the Killing Fields.  However, many prisoners also died inside S21 prison.  There were larger rooms which were reserved for torture and execution, and smaller brick cells where prisoners were chained to the floor in the corner.  Prisoners were numbered in order of execution and there were many photographs of these prisoners and the ways in which they were tortured and then executed.

From S21 we drove a little out of town to the Killing Fields.  This was the final destination for many of the nearly 3 million Cambodians who were killed during this terrible time in Cambodia’s history.  We first went into the ’Stupa’ which is a memorial which houses 17 levels of the victims’ bones.  On the eye level layer were skulls that were identified according to their gender and how they were killed – some by beheading, bullets or bayonets.  We then walked around and looked at the many mass graves, some of which held up to 400 victims.  We could also see bones and teeth coming up through the paths where we walked. The most confronting site was a tree which was used to kill the babies where some of us left a friendship bracelet to remember these children.

We found today’s visits very daunting and heartbreaking.  We are Jewish people who have learned a lot about a Holocaust that happened to us and killed many of our family members.  Today we learned that this also happened to Cambodian people only a short time ago, when many of our parents were the same age as we are now.  The Cambodian people lost nearly 50% of their population, families and children, if they survived, were never reunited- we knew so little about what happened. But we know now. 

As we prepare for Shabbat at Chabad Phnom Penh, we will keep today’s visits in our minds and be thankful for the freedom and opportunities we all have.

Matt and Zac