The Killing Fields - some history

The killing fields originally were the main reason for me to go to Phnom Penh. For everyone who doesn´t know what on earth that is: It´s The place where 3mio Khmer were killed by Pol Pot and his army, the Khmer rouge. Pot wanted to create his type of Communism, which included killing all the intellectuals (Jurists, teacher, Doctors, whoever wore glasses or looked smart – I´m not joking). All the “good people”, like farmers, were put together in camps, where they had to work for over 12 hours a day, in return for a tiny bowl of rice soup and water.

The "Killing Fields" in Phnom Penh are one of about 300 places where this horror took place.

I didn´t really know what to expect, but wasn´t disappointed at all. For the price of 6$ you´re getting a 2 hour audio tour through the area, everything you see is explained, you´re even getting to hear some stories of people who experienced the war themselves.

The whole place brought the thoughts about the German history with the Nazis and Hitler in my mind, but especially these stories drew some really strong parallels. People were tortured to get false confessions, people were fighting about their own fellow citizens.

People were brought to the place where they were supposed to kill under wrong promises, so they had no idea what was going on, until it was too late.

Familys were seperated to work in different labor camps and so many didn´t die directly by the hands of the Khmer army but because of starvation, lack of water, overwork.

Whoever knows me, knows that I´m not the most emotional person on earth, but seeing the tree against witch the Khmer hit BABYS to kill them, literally made me cry.

They most of the time killed the baby´s first, so that the mothers would have to watch their kids die, to add some extra torture. Or rape the women before killing them. Whatever would hurt them not only physically, but emotionally.

One could imagine, that they used at least proper weapons for the killing, but no. They had to use whatever was there, from bamboo sticks or stones over shovels to axes, sometimes even kitchen tools. So the victims weren´t even guranteed a fast death!

Peoplehad to kneel in front of their grave, watching the dead corpses which were already inside (because of course, it was mainly mass graves!), waiting for any tool to hit them and hopefully kill them fast.

It was a cruel and hard part of Cambodias history, and you can retrace what happened where and why really well! The whole tour ends with the visit of a tower, in which over 9000 skulls and bones from the victims are shown.

It´s really not a nice place to go, but I´d say that whoever goes to Cambodia has to visit the Killing Fields

! It helped me a lot in understanding the Khmer culture a bit better.