نابودی، انقلاب، قتل عام و....

Helloooo🙋🏼‍♀️

We booked a tour at the hotel yesterday. The plan was to go to the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in the afternoon. More about that later.

The alarm clock was supposed to ring at 08:30 this morning. But as luck would have it, someone knocked on our door at 7:40 and said 'sorry'. Luckily, Lara was only half awake. Our tour in the afternoon had to be canceled for unexplained reasons. Instead, they offered us the same tour in the morning. The problem: we will be picked up in 30 minutes.

Since our coordination, mood, and everything else in the morning are very limited, it was really a challenge. Especially since we still had to have breakfast and breakfast is in a different building 🤦🏽‍♀️

We didn't even have a coffee on the table when the phone rang - our bus is here🙄🙄🙈

Thanks for nothing - we started the day without coffee in a good mood.

First, we went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S21). Until shortly before 1980 there was still war in Cambodia. And no, not with another nation, but among their own people. A Cambodian, Pol Pot, the first person who was allowed to study abroad in Paris, founded a party. Eventually, this army became the "Khmer Rouge". Khmer is the language and the people here...the Khmer Rouge were the rebels.

Objective: to destroy Cambodia and start from scratch, without classes, without economy.

You can imagine the reason behind this as long as you can come up with one.

In 1975, the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh and evacuated 3 million people. Somewhere. Anyone who rebelled was shot. Randomly, regardless of gender, age, etc.

Later on, all the intelligent, those who wore glasses or were artists, were systematically tortured until they died. Also their families, because it had to be ensured that no one opposed the regime and that no one wanted revenge.

All of this here is a bit reminiscent of the Nazi era. It feels even worse. Because this was simply a war in their own country - against their own people.

The Tuol Sleng Museum used to be a school that was converted into a torture center by the Khmer Rouge. Like the Killing Fields, these places were secret and no one outside knew what was going on inside. Day and night, loud music was played so that no screams could be heard.

We don't need to go into detail about what they did to the people inside and on the Killing Fields.

We were in shock for exactly 4 hours. Blood stains can still be seen everywhere, clothing and bones can be seen. No one was killed in Tuol Sleng. The people died from the torture.

If it took too long for someone to die or if someone rebelled, they were evacuated. And that is the Killing Fields. People were brought here to be killed.

From initially 10 people per week, it became 300 people per day.

Intellectuals, their families, artists, babies, thieves, government officials... they were all here, and none of them knew what was happening.

The killing fields (there are about 300 of them in Cambodia, 60% have not been discovered yet) are basically a mass grave. Here we were able to take a few pictures for you to look at.

That was simply overwhelming. It's so terrible to stand in these exact places... we heard and saw so much today. No words can do justice to the whole situation.

The Vietnamese eventually invaded and ended the nightmare.

The country was devastated - 1/3 of the population was eradicated. The economy was in ruins....

It's all the more astounding when you're here today and see what happened in 40 years.

Nevertheless, nothing is forgotten here... so many people still alive who have experienced all of this up close... and none of it has been dealt with...

Honestly, we are still so affected that we don't want to and can't go into more detail.

We will get back to you with nicer stories in the next few days, hopefully....