the killing fields, khmer rouge, khmer rouge memoir,
Pol Pot, KHMER ROUGE GENOCIDE. ANGKAR. MEMOIR.
Love of Life - A Miraculous Story
EXTRACT
CHAPTER 10 - Forced march to Chan Ondyt killing
machine
Arrival outside Chan Ondyt killing machine
We arrived in front of a big metal gate, the
entrance to the killing compound, “Chan Ondyt” - death was staring, grinning,
beckoning to us. Here it was - the gateway to hell. (This had previously been a
local-government compound. I had been there many times pre Khmer Rouge). The
big metal gate was wide open. We were stuck in front of this gate because we
could not go forward to the intersection 50 meters away, which was packed with
victims, and more coming.
I looked into the compound – it had high
walls around it. I could see that it was about 1 kilometer long and 500 meters
wide. An internal street into the compound led to a big long building of two
floors. There were also many other smaller buildings there. In the compound was
a lake. The compound’s one side stretched over the side of a hill. We knew that
it also contained warehouses, crematorium, and torture chambers. It was a fully-equipped
killing machine.
There were trucks coming and going; dust and black
exhaust fumes were merging with the smoke and ash from the crematorium, leaving
a black and grey pall of death hanging over that compound. Trucks were
disgorging starving villagers, with gaunt eyes, terror on their faces, knowing they
were about to be butchered, soon to die a slow and painful death.
At the same time, in all the pandemonium, I
saw people running, crawling, out of that gate, with horror-stricken faces,
gasping painfully, towards the waiting crowd outside the gate! There were
guards outside the compound with guns yelling orders, but because of the large
crowd that had arrived unexpectedly, they had completely lost control. The
number of guards was not enough because the Khmer Rouge were too busy fighting
the patriots, and killing us at other sites all over the central and eastern
parts of the country.
Moving at a snail’s pace towards the
intersection which was 50 meters in front of us, I could see further in front
of me. There was a huge area in the middle of the intersection, now full of
people, spilling over everywhere into side roads near that intersection. These
roads came from other villages, for example from the east, plantations to the
north, and villages to the south and west. The whole situation was getting worse,
a huge and growing crowd of torn black uniforms and emaciated bodies, stuck
together.
Everyone was exhausted after the 9 hours’
march. No one knew where to go or what to do. My family and I were still stuck
in this huge crowd, everywhere there was the sight and sound of suffering,
grieving parents trying to find their children, adults crying and screaming,
desperate to find separated family members. Kids were crying for food and
water, everyone was hungry and thirsty. By now there must have been over 20,000
people here. Large numbers were fainting, even dropping dead on the spot.
Sokhorn’s warning!
In the middle of all this chaos and panic, my
family and I heard and saw someone about 10 meters away, in front of the gate,
calling from another waiting crowd, standing in front of the gate. This person
was waving and moving towards us. Who could this be? Suddenly we heard Sokhorn‘s voice screaming, “Mom! Mom!” And
there she was, looking like a ghost, with a horrified expression on her face.
We hardly recognized her.
It was a miracle that we could find each
other in that crowd. Then all at once, as all of us started shouting with joy,
mom fainted. It was lucky that one of the siblings caught her on time before
she fell onto the ground and got trampled to death. She was already weak, so
that when she suddenly saw her daughter right there before her eyes, the shock
was too much.
Sokhorn screamed loudly over and over again,
hoping that everyone in the vicinity would hear her. She was warning all of us
and others not to stop at the intersection or near it. She screamed,
“You must all keep going - if you don’t, you will all
be dead by tonight!”
She then fought her way through the crowd to
join us. We all hugged and kissed her - although everyone was crying, she
immediately helped to get us out of that place onto another road that pointed
to a plantation nearby. She was shocked to see her family in front of the gate
to death.
While we were frantically pushing our way out
of the crowd, struggling to walk to the plantation, guards were directing the
crowd to stay at the intersection. They said if we wanted to stay in a camp
nearby, we had to stay by the intersection. It was obvious - these killers were
just saying this to keep us by the intersection, so that we could later be
herded into the compound and be killed. There was no “camp” nearby. However,
many villagers from other areas believed them - no doubt they were later
butchered in that compound.
Above all the noise and chaos, Sokhorn
shouted “Ah Pot” (bad Pot) was butchering thousands of people inside this
compound all the time! She said they let her go because the killers did not
have enough staff (killers) to carry on with the killing, because the trucks
had already offloaded too many victims “to be processed” (like animals in an
abattoir) by the killing machine. She yelled that she had seen everything - we
were stunned that she had witnessed killings. I could feel her, she was
trembling with shock.
“Move! Keep moving!” She shouted urgently.
We must keep pushing ahead towards the
direction of the plantation, about 1 kilometer away! I could see the plantation
to the north of where we were standing. It was terrifying to find out that she
had actually been inside the killing machine, and had survived. We were hearing
what happened there from her own mouth. As we kept pushing through the crowds,
we all shouted at the same time:
“How did you end up in that compound?”
Sokhorn’s story of survival
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