A short while ago I gave some personal thoughts about the city of Wrocław and its sufferings during and immediately after World War II and the ghosts which still haunt Poland in 2010. It brought to mind an all too short visit I made to Cambodia in 2007.
I have no wish to deny the pain suffered as a direct or indirect result of WWII , especially but not exclusively by the Jews, but we should not forget that other countries have suffered equally traumatic episodes in more recent times.
Cambodia is a special case in point. The Pol Pot regime of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia lasted for four years , between 1975 and 1979. During that time a systematic elimination process took place to remove all groups that were considered to be opposed to or more correctly were anathema to the bizarre communist agrarian collectivization ideals of the leader Pol Pot. Estimates vary as to the total number who lost their lives , but the most reliable figure seems to be around 2.2 million of the 8 million total population. The most notable were the mass killings of the members of any group which was considered tainted by Western influences such as teachers, doctors , lawyers and academics. Eyeglasses were as deadly as the yellow star as they were seen as a sign of intellectualism! In addition to the victims of the “Killing Fields” hundreds of thousands died as a result of the complete elimination of all large centres of population. In Phnom Penh even hospitals were cleared of patients irrespective of their condition. Many died as a result of hard labour, starvation and deprivation of all that could keep them alive.
The period is often referred to as the Cambodian Holocaust, however ,its affect unlike the European Holocaust of WW II, is largely out of the spotlight. We are not continually called upon to remember its victims, although in the Cambodian context it was far more deadly than the extermination of the Jews under the fanaticism of the Third Reich. It is claimed that EVERY family was affected in some way; some losing an entire generation.
There is one very significant difference in Cambodia. Whereas in Europe even in 2010 there is still a lot of looking back with sorrowful memories and lamenting what was lost and recrimination about the way it was lost, in Cambodia this is not the case. The Cambodian people have suffered tremendously but do not seem to keep carping about their losses and blaming all and sundry for them , but always have a welcoming smile and cheery disposition.
On one occasion I went on a small boat to visit one of the many floating villages around Tonle Sap Lake, which are mostly populated by Vietnamese and Cham Muslim communities ( two of many groups terrorised by Pol Pot) . The young boatman was very friendly, and at the mid point of our journey we invited him to join us for some refreshment. He talked in very good English about the lakeside communities and told us that this was a summer job for him. He was trying to save enough money to go to England or America. He touched briefly on his family and told us he lived with an Aunt near the lake ,and said that his mother and father had been teachers – but did not elaborate further.
In Siem Reap I visited a Buddhist temple which was used as a safe storage location during the Khmer Rouge period for statues of the Buddha rescued from the many temples that were destroyed at the time of the Killing Fields. The young caretaker showed us the temple and its store of Buddhas, but also told us that the temple was an education centre for the many young boys from the broken families of that awful period in the country’s recent past
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