A deranged school of thought

“At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.” - Aldous Huxley

I’ve only been really moved a couple of times in my life and, unfortunately, both times were when I’ve been confronted by pure evil.

The first was when I stepped into the unmitigated wickedness that is Auschwitz, and now at S21 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Formerly the Tuol Svay Prey High School, this educational institution had somewhere between 17,000 and 20,000 people interned within its walls from 1975 to 1979, as it was renamed Tuol Sleng, or S21.

The museum that stands in those very classrooms now holds testament to the brutality of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime, and tries to make some sense of the madness and cruelty that took place in the former house of learning.

Images and descriptions of torture are somewhat out of place on the bright and sunny day we saunter around the grounds. The horrors depicted are clear and stark as the surrounding of the classroom walls, many of which held the inmates.

Its ordinariness is chilling. Surrounded by housing and shops, just like any other school, this is that place where the intelligencia of a nation was all but destroyed.

Small birds fly from classroom to classroom, in and out of the small holes in the wiring. Something that looks like a climbing frames, which is in fact a gallows where prisoners were routinely executed, sits imposingly in a courtyard.

I can’t wait to get out. There are so many good things to see in Cambodia; Angkor Wat, the Mekong, fabulous French and local cuisine.

This all seems such a waste.


Lest we forget.

Cheers,

Blocka