Collection
Cambodian Genocide Collection (USC Shoah Foundation)
The Cambodian Genocide collection holds five survivor testimonies in the Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation.[1] The foundation built the collection in partnership with the Documentation Center of Cambodia.[1]
History
The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh in April 1975 and held power for just under 45 months, until January 1979.[1] Within days they had killed thousands of soldiers and forced millions of people out of the cities, killing anyone who refused or moved too slowly. They abolished private property, money, religious practice, minority languages and foreign clothing, and forced families to live communally in order to break them apart.[1] People were held, tortured and executed in prisons. Of the roughly 17,000 men, women and children brought to S-21 in Phnom Penh, about a dozen survived, and mass graves across the country became known as the killing fields.[1]
The foundation gives the toll as 1.6 million to 3 million civilians dead from starvation, torture, execution, untreated disease, forced marches and forced labor, and notes that the true number may be higher because the Khmer Rouge stayed active in remote areas after 1979.[1] Britannica gives an estimate of 1.5 million to 3 million deaths, about one quarter of the population.[2]
The USC Shoah Foundation recorded the five testimonies in the United States in 2009, 2011 and 2015. It added them to the Visual History Archive in January 2017.[1]
Material coverage
All five narrators saw the Khmer Rouge empty Phnom Penh in April 1975. They lived through the forced marches that followed and forced labor in northwestern Cambodia.[1] Three testimonies are in English, and two are in Khmer with English subtitles.[1]
Two short films from the testimonies appear on the collection page. In Phansy Peang on Losing Her Family to Genocide, Phansy Peang tells how the loss of both her parents and her children affected her. In The Power of Anger, Theary Seng reflects on anger and on the difference between anger and hate.[1]
Catalog and access
The foundation offers the full Visual History Archive to subscribing institutions. The Visual History Archive Online, open to anyone after free registration, carries index data on all interviewees and full-length video for a subset of testimonies. At USC, the full archive is available on the university's secured network or through its virtual private network.[3]