In my history, I’ve stumbled through Dachau, proudly marched at Vimy, tiptoed in Jericho, and buckled at Tuol Sleng. At each, many people had taken their final breath, seen their last snapshot; dying at the hands of ruthless oppressors, in glorious battle, for the protection of their homes and families, or shackled to the floor.
Death is a private thing. It is a time where someone is at their most vulnerable and is perhaps the only true first-time experience. You can’t touch it, you can’t deny it, and you can’t understand it. It is final. It occurs in one place and at one moment in time.
At Vimy, the gaping holes in the earth from the Allies’ rolling artillery barrage offered a hint at where exactly those German, Canadian, British, American, or French soldiers had perished, but never gave away the full story. At Dachau, you knew that wherever you put your foot down someone had been beaten, tortured, harassed, or executed, but could still never fill in all of the blanks. The dead aren’t advertised at these places. No “X marks the spot” where someone fell…only clues, only fragments; Swiss Cheese – full of holes.
Until Choeung Ek…until the Killing Fields.
The sign said “MASS GRAVE OF MORE THAN 100 VICTIMS CHILDREN AND WOMEN WHOSE MAJORITY WERE NAKED”. One of several mass graves marked with chillingly different signs detailing the states in which the bodies were discovered. “No heads” rang out particularly – but at least that was quick…quicker than the torture they had all suffered mere hours before at S-21. So here I stood, paralyzed at the edge of a grave where a mere 30 odd years ago, 100 women and children had been knelt down and bludgeoned to death – with farm implements. On that spot, that very spot, tens of people had been cut down for reasons even unknown to them. Then they fell, limp and without fear anymore, they rolled down the sides of this pit before me, the echo of the loudspeaker drowning out their final guttural sounds; gruesome work.
Then I knelt. I tried to see everything through the victim’s eyes, to witness that last worldly image they must have seen. I tried to imagine the fear, the anger, the pain, the injustice. Tried to make sense of what I was, ever so briefly, a part of. But I stood up empty. They were blindfolded when they were murdered.
No one can imagine that fear.
No one can put themselves into those shoes.
No one except the victims.
Death is personal. Choeung Ek is personal. The grounds are quiet and unassuming. The lush forests and local shop vendors give no hint of the horrors 30 years past. But the earth screams a story - a story that falls on the deaf ears of those who cannot, or choose not to, listen.
Right now, the story of Choeung Ek is being written elsewhere – I guarantee it. Somewhere, someone on this earth is not just feeling the fragments, the Swiss cheese. They are not just getting a glimpse into the past. They’re 32 years ahead of Pol Pot, 16 ahead of Bagosora, 15 ahead of Mladic, and kneeling down on the edge of hell praying for a miracle; someone to listen.
Never again…?
Falling.
Silence.
