--seda deth.
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i still haven't processed everything i saw today and i don't know if i can.
today was definitely the hardest day we've had yet. it took us four and a half hours to get through the museum, and we had to break about three times to collect ourselves before re-entering. many of these pictures will be difficult to look at, but they are just that-- pictures. they're not the eerie aura of the old high school, they're not the dense, empty air we felt, and they're certainly not the sadness we endured in that atmosphere. but they're heartbreaking, nonetheless.
and they're real.
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i've been to the holocaust museum in dc and expected it to be rough, but left without one tear. maybe i'm hard-hearted, or maybe i just numb myself to avoid letting these things penetrate my emotional stability. and though i never quite lost my composure the way i thought i would here, i found that i often lost myself in and out of these rooms. i spaced, trying to imagine what the prisoners here experienced.
i took my guard down for this visit.
we arrived at nine forty-five, just in time for the ten o'clock documentary showing. the juxtaposition of the beautiful palm trees that we associate with beaches, beauty, relaxation and happiness against the cracked white buildings was disturbing.
we followed a bunch of people into a room on the third floor of building d and sat down. for the most part, the documentary followed a young couple through their mother's perspective. they were cousins, the same year in age, but had to be married to have a better chance of survival during the regime. through time, they fell in love.
eventually they were separated, as each was carried away to different work camps. their letters to each other were found and helped in documenting their hardships. seda, the woman, lost hope early on and, understandably, began suffering from mental disorders. in one letter, she stated "physically and mentally, i'm already dead." but deth had more determination, and would reply to "wait until there is peace and we shall live together again."
but they never lived together again. actually, they were both taken to s-21 on separate occasions and for different reasons. deth arrived around september of 1976 and seda just two months later in november.
they were both killed on march 16, 1977.
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after the documentary, alex and i made our way back downstairs to the first floor. we began with building d, as we had no tour guide and didn't really know the setup of the museum. it turns out that there are four buildings. when you walk in the entrance, two are almost side by side facing front, and two come off of their outermost walls, facing from there, creating almost a lowercase "n" shape. from left to right, they were labeled a, b, c, and d.
building d actually seemed to be the right place to start. when we walked into the room, holes where eyes had been and teeth that had been for smiling greeted us. we were welcomed by a display of skulls that were excavated here. was our heartening welcome. most of them showed evidence of their last breaths, with holes in the top or a crack across the back, depending on the method that had been used that day.
and there were never bullets. those couldn't be wasted on cambodians. more than likely, these skulls encased a mind that knew it was the end, and eyes that stared at their own graves right before falling in lifelessly-- except for those still wearing their blindfolds. they had been luckier.
there was nothing for alex and i to do but stare at the case.
during the documentary, we learned that of the 20,000 people who came to tuol sleng, seven survived. they did not escape death, they just either became employed or had not yet gotten killed. one of them was a painter. he was taken out of his shackles one night and told him to come work for them for one reason or another. he vowed that if he ever lived through the genocide that he would document the realities through paintings, as no photographs of the horrors were ever taken. we watched as he led an old s-21 secuirty guard around to each painting, asking him to validate the scenes. his work showed rows of ten or more people sleeping in shackles, guards shooting babies, numerous torture methods, and more.
i found this one to be the most sickening.
we continue into a room with more photographs. we walked the rows, looking from one set of eyes to the next. most of the faces were hard and cold, with lifeless eyes. sometimes you'd see a scared child, but the most chilling pictures were the five, six, and seven year olds whose faces were filled with pure hate. they were never actually given the chance to live, or experience life. now, in these photos, most knew they were going to die and had no emotional reaction. it was no use fighting.
there were a couple more exhibits that we walked through, showing the workers of s-21 then and now and included their reactions as they look back. there were also exhibits on those who lost family, studies done on the numerous ways prisoners were killed, and the ways people lived in the prison.
we continued along, walking then to building c which housed the smallest cells on the premesis. these were used for mass numbers of prisoners, and what had been one single classroom now contained eleven cells. the government had cut out doorways in the cement walls so you could look from one end of the building to the other.
we assumed this was so the guards could easily access anyone in the prison without having to go back outside. on the walls in ever rom, we saw the numbers one through eleven with lines between them, a way that they somehow kept track of the prisoners.
each room still had access to the outside, and with each block of light that would come through the doorway, we could see the barbed wire that caged us in. again, the contrast to the trees would catch us offguard and remind us of how lucky we are. as i was walking through the inside, i caught alex outside grabbing the wire between the barbs and looking below. there were small spaces at the top of each floor where prisons may have been able to escape, but the idea of blocking them off with the wire was so prisoners couldn't commit suicide. she was looking up and down, trying to place a person who would be so desperate in this situation.
we walked through each room of cells. the cells were so small, not even wide enough to sit with your legs straight out in front of you. a chair sat in one of the cells, and we're not sure why this particular one had such a convenience.
we made our way over to the other side of the property to buildings a and b. in front of building a was a large sign with the rules and laws by which the prisoners had to abide. you can click on the photo and it should enlarge enough for you to read.
behind the sign lay fourteen small bright white cement boxes, arranged in two lines. this was the burial ground of the last fourteen victims to be killed on the property. they were found in tuol sleng the day the vietnamese stumbled across the prison after taking phnom penh back in 1979. these were some of the last victims of the genocide itself during the regime, and sadly, they fell only a few days short of surviving the war. only one was female.
they were found in the larger rooms, and it appeared that they had been killed suddenly as guards and workers fled the prison.
in fact, the rooms in buildings a and b had some photographs of the way these victims were found. we walked through building a first. it was much like building c, except these rooms had not been converted into smaller cells. instead, they were used sometimes for interrogation, but often to hold prisoners of higher stature, such as lon nol government workers or other traitors directly affiliated with the government. they were bigger and the prisoners theoretically had more room, but they were still shackeled with limited mobility.
technically, building a had no exhibits-- it was one on its own. the building was virtually left untouched. the idea was to walk from room to room, and the repetition made my stomach churn. each room simply had a bed, a barred-off window, shackles, and a large photograph of the victim's mangled body that last occupied the room.
i would just stand and stare. there was nothing else to do. stand, stare, and think.
but what is there to think? you can only think so much about rhetorical questions. who was the person on the wall? where is his family? are they alive, and have they been here? do they even know his body is on the wall? what was his job, and why was he chosen to come here? what crime did the khmer rouge believe he committed? what tortures did they do to him? how many interrigations did he go through, and what did he think? had he lost hope, the way i figure i would have? did he pass the long hours hoping to die? did he stare out the window? and did he spend his time in this corner, or that one, with his knees up to his chest, and his head hanging low?
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many tourists would grab flowers from the trees outside and set them down on the beds.
each room was the same concept with different photographs on the wall and a different placement of the bed. still, alex and i went into each one, sometimes for longer periods of time than others. sometimes we would stay right near the doorway, and if we were feeling brave enough, sometimes we would walk the perimeter of the room. sometimes i'd just stare into a corner, and other times i'd just watch the sunlight come in the windows and bounce off the walls.
the rooms seemed so dark, even in the middle of the day.
feeling tired, we weren't even sure if we could make it through building b, the last one. it was different than a, filled with more information. we first walked in to see rows and rows of photographs, all victims again.
just like in d, we went from face to face, wondering how they got to toul sleng and what they were thinking. some of the faces stood out more than others, and i found it ironic that as the sun shined through the window, the bars reflected off of the glass, still keeping them prisoners even after their deaths.
we walked down the long hallways, finishing out rounds for the museum.
we spent a great deal of time looking in and out of the rooms, staring through the bars into where cambodians suffered so much only thirty years ago. in the hundred five degree weather, i was often cold, feeling chills run down my back. it made a long, hard day for us, and by the time we left, we felt overwhelmed with information, images, and sadness.
it was a quiet ride back to the guesthouse.
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Y rae. racho. d.
