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Disturbing Story

Published: 28.04.2026

they were loaded onto trucks and taken to a former Chinese cemetery outside the city. There, now known as the
they were loaded onto trucks and taken to a former Chinese cemetery outside the city. There, now known as the
Killing Fields,
Killing Fields,
they were bludgeoned to death with spades, hammers, hoes, bamboo poles, or machetes and buried in mass graves.</p><p>A memorial filled with skulls and bones at the Killing Fields commemorates the mass murders. A tree, adorned with Buddhist ribbons, is particularly chilling: the executioners grabbed children and babies by the feet and smashed their heads against the tree until they were dead.</p> <p>Chum Mey, now 93 years old, survived S-21, a feat achieved by only seven prisoners. He has written a book about it,
they were bludgeoned to death with spades, hammers, hoes, bamboo poles, or machetes and buried in mass graves.</p><p>A memorial filled with skulls and bones at the Killing Fields commemorates the mass murders. A tree, adorned with Buddhist ribbons, is particularly chilling: the executioners grabbed children and babies by the feet and smashed their heads against the tree until they were dead.</p> <p>Chum Mey, now 93 years old, survived S-21, a feat achieved by only seven prisoners. He has written a book about it,
Survivor,
Survivor,
which has been translated into many languages and is sold at the exit of the former prison. There, Chum Mey answers questions from visitors.</p> <p>Chum Mey is not the only one calling to mind the traumatizing recent history of the region. The French as colonial masters and the Americans as warlords in the fight against communism played particularly vile roles in this. In Ho Chi Minh City, the War Remnants Museum documents the bloody chapter of the war that the Americans waged against Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. But certain local rulers like Pol Pot surpassed them in wickedness, cynicism, and contempt for humanity.</p> <p>Of course, the historiography of the victors is always biased. But what the Americans wrought in the twenty years between 1954 and 1973 in this part of the world is unprecedented. US bombers and helicopters dropped seven to eight million tons of bombs on Vietnam alone, more than were used in the entire Second World War. To obliterate the troop paths and supply bases of the communist North Vietnamese in Laos and Cambodia, the USA expanded the war to the neighboring countries from 1970 onwards, inflicting massive destruction there as well.</p> <p><b>Failed fight against communists</b></p><p>The devastation and the millions of suffering during the Vietnam War, which was protested worldwide with increasing fervor at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, were ultimately futile; the Americans' attempt to stop the spread of communism with their gigantic war machinery has miserably failed.</p><p>After the peace agreement of 1973, North Vietnam conquered the entire South and subjected it to communist dictatorship. This continues to dictate the political order in Vietnam today, while unrestrained capitalism has prevailed economically. In Laos, the communists overthrew the monarchy at the end of 1975; this country has also been ruled by communism ever since.</p> <p>The price for the senseless war was immense: 1.3 to more than three million people died in Vietnam, at least half a million in Cambodia; estimates for Laos range from 20,000 to 200,000. 58,220 US soldiers were killed, along with 5,000 to 6,000 South Koreans, more than 500 Australians and New Zealanders, and an unknown number of Philippine and Thai soldiers.</p> <p>Due to the use of chemical weapons, especially the infamous herbicide Agent Orange, millions of Vietnamese fell ill with cancer and other deadly diseases; at least 150,000 children were born with severe deformities.</p> <p><b>A mass murderer rules</b></p> <p>The consequences of the Vietnam War were particularly horrific in Cambodia: There, the Khmer Rouge overthrew the American-backed military dictator Lon Nol in 1975. They were led by a man who is now mentioned in the same breath as mass murderers Hitler, Stalin, and Mao: Pol Pot.</p> <p>Pol Pot, born Saloth Sar in 1925 or 1928, was educated in France and inspired by the French communists, who at that time pursued a Stalinist, pro-Soviet course. In Cambodia, he tried from 1975 to enforce a classless society in a self-sufficient workers' and farmers' state. The urban population, the wealthy, teachers, officials, and doctors were regarded as class enemies and were to be re-educated or exterminated.</p> <p>As a result, the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities after seizing power. Their inhabitants were forced to labor in rural cooperatives under extreme conditions. Famine and rampant diseases followed; hundreds of thousands fell victim to them. Hundreds of thousands more died cruelly in torture prisons and in at least 300
which has been translated into many languages and is sold at the exit of the former prison. There, Chum Mey answers questions from visitors.</p> <p>Chum Mey is not the only one calling to mind the traumatizing recent history of the region. The French as colonial masters and the Americans as warlords in the fight against communism played particularly vile roles in this. In Ho Chi Minh City, the War Remnants Museum documents the bloody chapter of the war that the Americans waged against Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. But certain local rulers like Pol Pot surpassed them in wickedness, cynicism, and contempt for humanity.</p> <p>Of course, the historiography of the victors is always biased. But what the Americans wrought in the twenty years between 1954 and 1973 in this part of the world is unprecedented. US bombers and helicopters dropped seven to eight million tons of bombs on Vietnam alone, more than were used in the entire Second World War. To obliterate the troop paths and supply bases of the communist North Vietnamese in Laos and Cambodia, the USA expanded the war to the neighboring countries from 1970 onwards, inflicting massive destruction there as well.</p> <p><b>Failed fight against communists</b></p><p>The devastation and the millions of suffering during the Vietnam War, which was protested worldwide with increasing fervor at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, were ultimately futile; the Americans' attempt to stop the spread of communism with their gigantic war machinery has miserably failed.</p><p>After the peace agreement of 1973, North Vietnam conquered the entire South and subjected it to communist dictatorship. This continues to dictate the political order in Vietnam today, while unrestrained capitalism has prevailed economically. In Laos, the communists overthrew the monarchy at the end of 1975; this country has also been ruled by communism ever since.</p> <p>The price for the senseless war was immense: 1.3 to more than three million people died in Vietnam, at least half a million in Cambodia; estimates for Laos range from 20,000 to 200,000. 58,220 US soldiers were killed, along with 5,000 to 6,000 South Koreans, more than 500 Australians and New Zealanders, and an unknown number of Philippine and Thai soldiers.</p> <p>Due to the use of chemical weapons, especially the infamous herbicide Agent Orange, millions of Vietnamese fell ill with cancer and other deadly diseases; at least 150,000 children were born with severe deformities.</p> <p><b>A mass murderer rules</b></p> <p>The consequences of the Vietnam War were particularly horrific in Cambodia: There, the Khmer Rouge overthrew the American-backed military dictator Lon Nol in 1975. They were led by a man who is now mentioned in the same breath as mass murderers Hitler, Stalin, and Mao: Pol Pot.</p> <p>Pol Pot, born Saloth Sar in 1925 or 1928, was educated in France and inspired by the French communists, who at that time pursued a Stalinist, pro-Soviet course. In Cambodia, he tried from 1975 to enforce a classless society in a self-sufficient workers' and farmers' state. The urban population, the wealthy, teachers, officials, and doctors were regarded as class enemies and were to be re-educated or exterminated.</p> <p>As a result, the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities after seizing power. Their inhabitants were forced to labor in rural cooperatives under extreme conditions. Famine and rampant diseases followed; hundreds of thousands fell victim to them. Hundreds of thousands more died cruelly in torture prisons and in at least 300
Killing Fields.
Killing Fields.
</p> <p>In 1979, Vietnam ended the rampage of Pol Pot and his gang with the invasion of Cambodia. The dictator fled to the jungle, lived partly in a camp in Thailand, and died in 1998 as a happy grandfather. About two million people, or a quarter of the Cambodian population, had fallen victim to his reign of terror. But Pol Pot was never held accountable; on the contrary: the UN and many countries like the USA and the UK recognized the murderers of the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate Cambodian government even into the 1990s.</p> <p><b>Forgiving the torturers</b></p> <p>Chum Mey, at the exit of the S-21 prison museum, has now finished his lunch. His survival of the prison horror was due to a coincidence: One of the typewriters that the executioners used to document their interrogations had malfunctioned. Chum Mey, as a trained mechanic, was instructed to repair it, which he managed to do. From then on, he was employed for various repair tasks in the prison, which saved his life.</p> <p>He asserts that he has forgiven his torturers.
</p> <p>In 1979, Vietnam ended the rampage of Pol Pot and his gang with the invasion of Cambodia. The dictator fled to the jungle, lived partly in a camp in Thailand, and died in 1998 as a happy grandfather. About two million people, or a quarter of the Cambodian population, had fallen victim to his reign of terror. But Pol Pot was never held accountable; on the contrary: the UN and many countries like the USA and the UK recognized the murderers of the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate Cambodian government even into the 1990s.</p> <p><b>Forgiving the torturers</b></p> <p>Chum Mey, at the exit of the S-21 prison museum, has now finished his lunch. His survival of the prison horror was due to a coincidence: One of the typewriters that the executioners used to document their interrogations had malfunctioned. Chum Mey, as a trained mechanic, was instructed to repair it, which he managed to do. From then on, he was employed for various repair tasks in the prison, which saved his life.</p> <p>He asserts that he has forgiven his torturers.
What I had to endure was terrible,
What I had to endure was terrible,
Attraction
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Worth seeing
S-21
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Museum
Tuol Sleng
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Tour
Besuch bei Chum Mey im Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
Tour

Chum Mey sits in a shady spot having lunch. It is the 19th. We have visited the former Tuol Sleng schoolhouse in the middle of Phnom Penh, which became infamous as prison S-21 under the communist dictator Pol Pot and his reign of terror from 1975 to 1979. Tiny cells were built into the classrooms; the prisoners were chained to the bare floor. They relieved themselves in canisters and ammunition boxes. As a genocide museum, S-21 is meant to keep the memory of the darkest chapter in Cambodian history alive.

Between 12,000 and 20,000 men, women, and teenagers were detained here, beaten, electrocuted, and subjected to other forms of torture to extract confessions. The interrogations were meticulously documented. When the tortured finally confessed to being CIA agents and agitating against the communist party, and named other

At a glance

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Accompaniment
With friends
Mood
Cultural
Highlights
  • Besuch des Tuol-Sleng-Genozid-Museums in Phnom Penh
  • Begegnung mit Chum Mey, einem Überlebenden von S-21
  • Auseinandersetzung mit der Geschichte der Roten Khmer
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