A bit about Cambodias sad history

I don't know if you already saw that on the right side of my blog I put a list of books I have been reading so far. Some books are completely random, they were just what book-swapping-shelfs in hostels had to offer. However, the book I am reading now and the one I will read next are linked to the countries I am visiting:

I bought "Emma Larkin - Finding George Orwell in Burma" in Ho Chi Minh City, which I am really excited about and looking forward to read. I will definitely tell you more about that in the future...

But before that I wanted to know more about Cambodia, where I am at the moment. And I was really lucky that Alice, my friend from Austria with whom I will travel to Burma in January and whom I met here in Phnom Penh for a few days, gave me the book she just finished reading. It is THE book about the Khmer Rouge - a bit like a Anne Franks famous "the diary of a young girl" for Cambodians (I shamefully have to admit though that I never read Anne Frank...):
First they killed my father by Ung Loung.

Ung Loung tells the history of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, a communist military regime that ruled the country for 3 years, 8 months and 20 days from 17th of April 1975, through the story of her own childhood. Within these not even 4 years of Khmer Rouge rule, a horrible regime build on mistrust and the horrifying ideals of brother number 1 Pol Pot, up to 2,5 million people (around 20% of the population) died - they were either killed or died because of the living conditions. The Khmer Rouge were tearing families appart, making people work under unhuman conditions without hardly any food and exterminated anybody believed to be an enemy of the regime...

Alice and I went together to the Choeng Ek memorial, better known as Killing Fields: it is an extinguishing camp not far away from Phnom Penh, where people having been kept and tortured in the S-21 (the Tuol Sleng prison) of Phom Penh were brought to to be killed.

Pol Pot wanted to create a new Cambodia, a completely slef-sufficient country with only two classes: peasants and workers. Therefore the old population had to be extinguished. People had to leave the cities and work on the countryside. Many thousands died when the Khmer Rouge forced everybody to leave all cities - regardless of their physical condition. Within just 2-3 days all cities were literally emptied.
Angkar - the government - had many enemies: members of the old regime, people living in the cities, educated people, ... If you were able to speak a foreign language, or even if you were wearing glasses was enough to be killed.

We also visited the S-21 prison - now the Tuol Sleng Genozide museum - in Phnom Penh after having been to the Killing Fields. You could see photos of the imprisoned people, read about the history of the Khmer Rouge and their leaders. And you could also see the prison cells and the torture instruments...

During my stay in Poland 5 years ago I have been to Auschwitz. Already there, and here again, I felt completely helpless. The question "why?" can never be answered...

I know this blog is about my travel and maybe you prefer to read only about the great things I experience. However, I felt I needed to write about this as well - not everything is or was beautiful... But don't worry, I'll try to be funny again the next time!
And not everything is bad in this context neither: unlike other countries Cambodia is much faster in dealing with its recent history (you remember I wrote about the glorification of other leaders in other countries who as well had a lot of blood on their hands...).
I find this very positive and feel that the people are also looking positively into the future!