Pol Pot - The Khmer Rouge & the Killing Fields Documentary

In college I had a classmate in my writing class that was a refugee from Cambodia. He read his paper to the class. I remember him relating how he and his sister and his mother had to flee to the jungle. They were starving, and figured out what berries and seeds were hopefully safe to eat by watching the birds and what they ate.

And after he got to the part where, while searching the jungle for food he came to a clearing and looked down to find himself staring down into a massive and deep pit full of dead people. He was pretty sure his father was among the dead in that pit. There wasn't a dry eye in room. It was 30 years ago and it haunts me still. 

Khmer male here, my mother and grandmother were survivors of the regime. Unbelievably, I was born April 15th, 1998, the day of his death. My mother sees me as a blessing and new era to her life after I was born. She was a child during the regime, and had to eat tarantulas and snakes. We now live in America, and we have a nice home and she never wants to hear his name ever again. I spent some time at the killing fields today in Cambodia. 

There are still bones and clothes coming up through the ground, being eroded by rain and sun. The row after row, room after room of photographs of the victims. And millions more lost and unknown. Each one a person with family, hopes and dreams. The school, which would have been built with the best of intentions, was turned into a slaughterhouse prison. Blood splatter still stains the high ceilings, walls and floor. 

Everyone in this country is deeply effected. Only 8 escaped the prison when the Vietnamese came. Only 2 are alive today. They return to the prison each day to share their story, in the form a small book available for purchase. One kept alive because he was a mechanic and could fix the typewriters. The other, a skilled painter.

It was truly a surreal experience.