I learned about the Holocaust at the age of 14. Instead of reading about it in at textbook, I walked the grounds of Dachau Concentration Camp with my best friend, Becky, her sister, and her father, learning for the first time what happened during World War II. I didn’t take any pictures, but it was something I’ll never forget. You can’t stand inside a gas chamber, in front of sooty ovens, and not be changed.
Thursday was kind of like that day 13 years ago.
I wasn’t taught about Cambodia in school (or college) growing up. I barely even knew where it was until a few years ago. I didn’t know what kind of government it had, its language, religion, or what kind of food they ate there. I definitely didn’t know about what happened there 35 years ago.
When the Khmer Rouge Regime came to power in the mid-1970’s, they killed everyone in the country who knew how to read or write. All white collar professionals, officials, officers, teachers, 
businessmen, doctors, students, etc. They killed their children too- because they believed that if they didn’t, eventually those children would grow up and take revenge. So every night for years, they killed fathers, mothers, children, sisters, and brothers one by one in an old Chinese graveyard. Blindfolded, bound, left near the “Magic Tree” waiting… only able to hear loud music… they were taken, killed, and tossed into mass graves. In all, over 2 million people were murdered.
There are over 380 “Killing Fields” in Cambodia. The one we visited was in an old Chinese graveyard. Some of the gravestones are still there… alongside the deep depressions in the ground.
When we walked in, the first thing I saw was a monument pictured above. I thought maybe it was a tribute to those lost. Then we walked inside. And I saw this:
Seventeen levels of skulls, arm bones, leg bones, rags, teeth…. All that remains of those buried in that particular field. Some of the glass windows were rolled away and the bones were mere millimeters from my face.
So many lives lost… so many people who didn’t know Him.
Our tour guide showed us the palm tree with razor sharp frond teeth, where adults were beheaded. The mass grave with 450 people in it, the largest one. The mass grave where 170 headless bodies lay. The stations along the way where the bones, teeth, and clothes that were still appearing were placed. The “baby” tree. I’m not even going to describe what happened there.
I was struck by the silence on the grounds, the deep, deep holes in the field… and the objects in our way. As we walked along the paths, bones, clothing, and teeth lay right next to our feet. What’s been buried deep continues to surface. It’s been almost 40 years, and the secrets under the earth are still being revealed.
What is in the dark always comes into the light.
When the Khmer Rouge Regime was overthrown, the country was left in chaos. With all educated citizens gone, it literally had to start over. And it will take generations to rebuild.
This is the ancestry of sex trafficking. Part of it due to a government so focused on lining its own pockets that it ignores the pain of its people. Part of it due to lack of education/reasoning skills-or the ability as a country to resist this practice. Part of it due to lack of anywhere else to turn. All of it due to pure evil.
Just another form of genocide… damaging the future of the country. Destroying lives right now.
Lest we forget the sins of the past…
the lessons learned at horrible cost…
unless we learn again…
and remember what was lost…
life will always be in shadow.
