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The Holocaust: An Eyewitness Account
Editor ~s
note: The fo!lowing is a
firsthand account of a former U.S.
State Department official who wit–
nessed the results of the terrible
cruelties of the Khmer Rouge while
he wds working in the refugee camps
j ust before the Communist rakeover
in Apri/1975.
H
e's. dead now. Not surpri s–
ing when you consider he
wasn't much alive when
J
saw him a short while ago. Most of
them will die; even the few that
had been kept alive at the child nu–
trition center on the outskirts of
Phnom Penh where the weekly
death toll averaged from twenty to
thirty-six percent of admissions.
These child ren were starving
slowly. Debilitated and weakened,
thcy contracted a host of other dis–
eases and perished before anyone
realized they were alive at all.
Returning from Cambodia after
having seen these happy. resilient
people besieged by war is an ago–
nizing and indelible nightmare. As
a frequent traveler, I feel the char–
acter of the Cambodians. of all the
peoples I've encountered, is one of
the most appealing. They are
gentle, kind, quiet and trusting.
J
never had an unpleasant moment
caused by a Cambodian. for every
smile is returned and every laugh
soulful and sincere. They attempted
to hide nothing and seemed in–
capable of deceit. It is this that ac–
centuates the horror of seeing their
little children lifeless or limbless, or
with gaping abdominal wounds
purposely infticted by a vengeful
foe, whom, until recently, were sim–
ply referred to by the Cambodians
as "the other side."
It
was with shock and disbelief
that 1 saw photographs presented
me by a Cambodian officer. They
were taken at the February 2, 1975,
massacre at Kompong Speu. The
Khmer Rouge penetrated feeble
village defenses, buming an entire
6
AUTHOR WITH CHILDREN
in refugee
camp betore Communist takeover.
Catholic Relief Services refugee vil–
lage to the ground. There was no
accident
in
the pictures of muti–
lated corpses: women with babies
in their arms. knifed and slashed
open; children charred into unrec–
ognizable monsters, burned alive in
their straw huts. 1 saw the smolder–
ing ashes, the leveled village, the
clay cooking pots still containing
the simple fare thc refugee women
were preparing. Their possessions
were scorched and stark... bicycles,
water jars, cooking pots; an ugly.
sad aftermath of rage and hate.
Ten children had been kidnapped,
later found along the roadside with
their throats cut.
In the midst of the ashes, the
little ones that had not been killed
or kidnapped by the Khmer Rouge
carne out to see us, fire-ash dirty.
Those beautiful little children with
their sweet, innocent smiles. A few
of the adults left alive just sifted
through the rubble, mechanically,
vacantly carrying water to their
little gardens spared by the tire.
Cambodia is not just another
nameless, faceless place that news-
papers have made legend with their
exorbitant tales of suffering and
bloodshed. It is a land of love in
God's own sense of the word. It is a
rich. beautiful land where a seed
strewn out takes root and will grow.
A land whose gentle, soft-spoken
people and sweet children will melt
your heart. Such an unlikely place
for tragedy; such an unlikely place
for war, yet tive years of it brought
these people to the verge of disas–
ter.
To see little children dying. their
tiny bodies swollen or shriveled by
disease, is a disgrace to humanity.
To see them carried by weakened
mothers, hardly able to walk into
refugee camps, is heartrending.
These camps, for the most part,
were operated by ·catholic Relief
Services and other U.S. voluntary
agencies. A British doctor treating
people from the camps who met us
after a morning of visiting clinics
was completely overwrought a nd
visibly disturbed, recounting: " I've
had a perfectly dreadful moming.
Children are dying all over the
place."
lt
was all said in an ou t–
wardly stiff manner, yet so thinly
veiled, a profound grief.
The handful of American and
expatriate "do-gooders," as Wash–
ington-based people are fond of
calling them, have sacrificed and
labored so hard, and ... it isn 't easy
to take. Picture seeing a young boy
in
a simple green fatigue uniform.
his teenage face staring vacantly at
the remnants ofhis legs.
Perhaps this
story
should not be
written. Perhaps it is only a self–
evident epi logue. Still somehow it
must be told in the hopes and
prayers that someone, somewhere.
somehow can resolve the terrible
suffering of the children. What
manner of mankind is it that is ca–
pable of looking into the face of an
innocent, sweet child and ... slash–
ing his throat?
- John Christopher Fine
The
PLAIN TRUTH September 1978