Resilience over the Rouge

“You know what this used for?” Our tour guide stared at us, his face expressionless.
I was standing in the renowned Killing Fields in Choung Ek, Cambodia. One site of many where people were murdered by the Khmer Rouge regime during 1975 to 1979.
Our guide pointed to a large tree with outstretched branches, edges jagged and wave-like and tips that came to a sharp point.
“The Khmer Rouge used these sharp edges,” he paused as he touched a branch for effect, “and cut off the prisoner’s heads.”
Oh. I held my breath unable to hide my disgust. “This so they could save bullets,” he continued.
The guide stopped before a lofty tree with a large trunk and branches with leafage overhanging above our heads. It was a Chankiri Tree, nowadays known as the Killing Tree.
“You know what they did to babies?” I didn’t dare answer his hypothetical question. “Babies were held by their feet. Their heads were hit into the trees until they died.” They killed babies.
I later arrived at the Genocide Museum and realised I no longer had to imagine the faces of those who died at the Killing Fields as the museum clearly displayed those executed.
Prior to 1975, Tuol Sleng was a school until the Khmer Rouge took power. The prisoners there were photographed and forced to write about their lives.
My eyes ran over the impressions of faces; some bloody, most malnourished and innumerable pleading to the camera with their eyes. The photo of a young child caught my attention, no older than eighteen months old. His face so innocent and grim. I wondered whether his mother was already dead when the photo was taken and if so, had he witnessed the murder? My thoughts drifted to the Chankiri Tree at the Killing Fields.
I left the building with the image of that boy ingrained in my mind. It's ironic that this place was once a schoolyard intending to educate the next generation, not wipe them out from existence. This former school certainly taught me something though. Cambodians are resilient.