Nhem En checking his albums of photos.
Wednesday, July 8th 2009,
Toul Sleng Genocide Museum/HBO Nhem En worked in a Khmer Rouge death camp.
THE CONSCIENCE OF NHEM EN
Wednesday night at 8, HBO
It doesn't take long to explore the conscience of Nhem En.
He doesn't seem to have one.
This chilling documentary, which was nominated for an Oscar earlier this year, takes the viewer on a tour of the infamous 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. It's only a half-hour long, but feels as if it goes on for hours because the content is so grim, the sheer inhumanity so difficult to comprehend.
Filmmaker Steven Okazaki focuses on S-21, a high school that was converted into a prison that was really an execution chamber.
Over the four years of the Pol Pot regime, some 1.7 million Cambodians were slaughtered. At S-21, which today is open to the public as a memorial, 17,000 people were processed in. Eight survived.
Prisoners, who included everyone from infants to grandparents, were brought in and tortured until they confessed they were either CIA or KGB operatives - even though many did not know what the CIA or KGB were. They were then further tortured until they "named" at least one other person who was also a CIA or KGB operative.
Then they were executed.
Nhem En, who was 16, was the house photographer. As each prisoner was brought in, he took their picture - a classic mug shot, the prisoner staring into the camera. He estimates he photographed 6,000 prisoners, knowing that all were about to die.
"Conscience" includes other interviews, including two with survivors who recount the deprivation, torture and massacre of their families. One Khmer Rouge soldier is interviewed and says he knew nothing, did nothing, has nothing to say.
But Nhem En is the centerpiece. He is sorry people died, he says, but he had nothing to do with it, didn't even hear it, it happened in another room.
He's not sorry for his role, he says, because he did what was necessary to keep himself alive.
In fact, he says, "The world should thank me" for his work, because without his pictures, no one would remember these people.
It's a surreal moment. But Nhem En is facing, and sidestepping, the question that soldiers on the losing side have faced in almost every war back to the dawn of recorded history.
How could you do it, they are asked, and their replies are often some variation of the one here: Had I not done it, I would have been killed and they would have brought in someone else to do it.
Does the fact that Nhem En is right make his actions right?
"Conscience of Nhem En" starts off chilling and ends up haunting.
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