The Elimination
A Survivor of the Khmer Rouge Confronts his Past and the Commandant of the Killing Fields
Rithy Panh(Author)
The Clerkenwell Press
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-1-84668-931-4 (ISBN)
Description
From 1975 to 1979 Kang Kek Iew, better known as Comrade Duch, was in charge of S 21, the security prison at the heart of Pnomh Penh where 12,380 people were tortured and executed, having confessed to imaginary betrayals of Pol Pot's Communist regime. After his film S21, which brought survivors and executioners from the Khmer Rouge era together, Rithy Panh decided to film Duch, now a convicted war criminal, in prison. During 300 hours of filming he confronts the man in charge of the campaign of extermination, tries to understand his personal history, his ideology, his methods. He talks to him about how he recruited his torturers, but also about his passion for numbers, for order.
The process of confronting Duch every day - his cruelty, his evasions, his laugh - draws Rithy Panh back to the past and the horrors of the Khmer Rouge era. Exhausted and despairing, he decides to tell his own story and that of his family. Against the evil of Duch he holds up the good embodied in the person of his own father, who believed in and fought for justice and education, and who perished in the Khmer Rouge genocide.
The process of confronting Duch every day - his cruelty, his evasions, his laugh - draws Rithy Panh back to the past and the horrors of the Khmer Rouge era. Exhausted and despairing, he decides to tell his own story and that of his family. Against the evil of Duch he holds up the good embodied in the person of his own father, who believed in and fought for justice and education, and who perished in the Khmer Rouge genocide.
Reviews / Votes
This is a great text, humble in tone and with universal import * Le Monde * In the tradition of a Primo Levi or a Solzhenitsyn, the Franco-Cambodian cineaste Rithy Panh has published an exceptional testimony * Le Figaro * An exceptional document of Primo Levi's caliber ... Rithy Panh's book, The Elimination, through its strength, the starkness of its language, and the depths of its mystery, shows its significance * Elle * An incredibly powerful book. A book? More like a punch in the stomach! ... It is also a book with caustic intelligence, the slow deconstruction of a mad system * La Liberation *More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Profile Books Ltd
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-84668-931-4 (9781846689314)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Rithy Panh was born in Cambodia in 1965. He is a film-maker whose documentaries, including Rice People, S 21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine and Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell have achieved an international reputation.