I visited and toured both the Killing Fields in Cambodia and the Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany this year. Before my experience in these two places, I had never learned about genocide outside of a classroom setting. I came away from each place with different lessons and understandings (and misunderstandings) about humanity and life itself. These two visits were emotion evoking, but in starkly different ways. I had powerful experiences at each of these sites with horrific pasts and I feel strongly about what I have to share. I would like to dedicate this post to all the lives that have been lost in genocide, specifically at the Killing Fields and Dachau Concentration Camp.
The Cambodian genocide was carried out by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979 under their dictator, Pol Pat. It is estimated that it killed between 1.5 and 3 million people, essentially wiping out an entire generation. I knew very little about the genocide before I stepped foot on the Killing Fields, but when I first entered the gardens, I was shocked. The first thing I saw was a towerof human skulls. It stood a few hundred feet away, directly in front of me, and I couldn’t stop looking at it. It was haunting. I remember listening to my audio guide, trying to focus on what I was hearing through my earphones, but struggling. It was difficult to concentrate on something else while this monument was so grotesquely intriguing to me. In hindsight, the tower acted as a harbinger to the rest of the vastly tangible, raw emotion that is ever-present at the Killing Fields. Throughout the rest of my tour, I saw the weapons that were used to kill the Cambodians, rags and cloth that the people wore, and even the “beating tree,” where soldiers of the Khmer Rouge would beat babies and brutally kill them. I heard audio recordings of the traditional Cambodian music they would play over the loud sounds of a generator to cover the screams of people as they died. Everything was so real. Too real. I cried multiple times throughout that day, both during and after the tour. I was so horrified by the entire place. Everything was preserved and put on display in the original locations to give visitors a better idea of what occurred there. I felt like I was truly getting a glimpse of what many Cambodian people went through during this terrible time.
Dachau was different. It was chilling and desolate. Throughout most of my audio-guided tour there, I felt detached. I was numbed to what I was hearing and what I was seeing. As I walked throughout the camp, it was mostly empty space with some dead trees placed in eerily perfect patterns. I had a difficult time comprehending the atrocities that occurred at the camp because none of it felt real. There was no tangible evidence. My mind wandered and I had to imagine what occurred there as I listened to a survivor recount his story. I had to convince myself that the massive “roll-call square” was too smallto fit all of the prisoners that Dachau held. It just wasn’t logically possible. I remember walking in between the foundations of the barracks, which were behind the attendance area. All of the buildings had been taken down, so I only saw the concrete squares that were originally used to hold the buildings up. Again, I felt disconnected. How could people have lived here? It wasn’t possible to me. None of it was real. As I exited that area, I came across the religious memorials that were built to commemorate all those lives lost at Dachau. I thought that entering each chapel would be powerful, but again I felt underwhelmed. But then I reached the crematorium, the emotional apex of my tour. It all hit me there, and I immediately was able to conceptualize the horrors at this camp. I walked through “Barrack X,” which was home to the main gas chamber and crematorium. I felt an intense chill go over my entire body. I was standing in the chamber where thousands of prisoners had gone in to “take showers” and were killed within fifteen minutes of being sprayed with gas and acid. After only spending a few minutes there, I couldn’t take it anymore and I left the barrack. As I returned to the visitor center, I walked back through the barracks and the square. It was all real for me now. I could finally imagine what happened on those grounds.
I experienced different emotions between the Killing Fields and Dachau. I witnessed the overwhelmingly tangible aspects of the Killing Fields, whereas at Dachau I had to listen to my audio guide and imagine what happened, until I reached the crematorium. There is one overarching similarity, though. Neither place felt like it could even be on this earth. And this is where my misunderstandings for humanity and life come into play. I still just do not understand how any human being, either in the Khmer Rouge or the Nazi party, could have done the unspeakable things that they did to other human beings. Unfortunately, that is the link between the Killing Fields and Dachau- their impossible acts of inhumanity against their own people.
I took valuable lessons from each visit. I now believe that it’s worth itto go and see these places and learn what happened for myself. I learned more about the topic of genocide by going straight to the sites and learning from unbiased sources, which is something I couldn’t get in a classroom. Overall, visiting these places has made me think about eliminating my own small cruelties against myself and others. Anything that I can do to be a better person, and to slightly improve the lives of others around me, is what I strive for. In discovering this for ourselves, we can prevent these atrocities from occurring in the future.
Anna Nickerson 