Cambodia
“In the jungle I saw a lot of dead people.”
Hang Nget was 16 years old when she was deported with her family in 1975. She and other teenagers were forced to plant rice and dig irrigation canals for the rice fields. She mostly associates constant hunger with the time of the Red Khmer. Her six-person family received only three cans of rice a day; later the ration was reduced to two. In testimony published by TPO, a non-governmental organization, she describes how her brother was killed for secretly stealing food. "In 1976, darkness fell over [...Read more]
“They only stopped when we lost consciousness”
Kim So was a young monk when the Khmer Rouge invaded Phnom Penh in April 1975. When the deportation of the city’s inhabitants began, he returned to his hometown as a precautionary measure. He had to work in a mobile brigade there. Since he often returned from work very late, the cook would leave food for him. This led to the accusation that the 22-year-old was having an affair with her – a serious offense for the Khmer Rouge. In an interview he tells us how he felt when this happened. The DC-CAM [...Read more]
Chile
“The fear from then is still in me”
The silver cross stands alone on the road leading to the Calama airport. Here, in the dry desert earth, the bodies of 26 men executed by the Chilean military on October 19, 1973, were buried. When their families learned of this, the human remains disappeared. In a report published by the Amnesty International human rights organization, a victim’s sister describes her brother’s arrest. I am the eldest daughter of a typical Chilean family. I was 13 years-old when José Gregorio – fourth child and [...Read more]
“Sometimes I thought I was going to die”
A mural in the José Domingo Cañas Memorial in Santiago de Chile documents the torture carried out during the military dictatorship. The Chilean secret police DINA ran one of its own interrogation centers here. The prisoners were brutally beaten, nearly suffocated with plastic bags or abused with electrical shocks. One victim, who was held in barracks in Valdivia in 1984, described to the Commission on Political Imprisonment what he experienced there. “One of the agents was veiled and in a [...Read more]
Ethiopia
![[Translate to Englisch:] Zellentür](/fileadmin/_processed_/6/2/csm_1280px-Addis_Ababa_2014_11__15731371026__a1baaa9400.jpg "Door of a Cell")
“Torture was a daily experience”
The Ethiopian documentation and research center collects documents and survivor testimony about the time of the Red Terror. The following report was compiled from an interview with a former prisoner. "I am a survivor of the Red Terror, now aged 55. In 1978, at the age of 21, I was imprisoned for five years. I had been accused of being an Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) member and was arrested after my friend and comrade betrayed me, which was typical of politics at that time. First, [...Read more]
![[Translate to Englisch:] Vitrinenschrank mit Schädel](/fileadmin/_processed_/5/d/csm_Red_Terror_Martyrs__Memorial_Museum_in_Addis_Abeba_bearb_835185a3f3.jpg "Showcase cabinet with skull")
“I am still traumatized”
The English website of the human rights memorial project of the African Union (AU) has recorded several survivors’ testimonies on their persecution during the Red Terror. One victim, who according to the organization asked for his testimony to remain anonymous, describes his arrest in 1978. "I was only 20 years old in August 1978 when the Ethiopian security agents of the Dergue regime accused me of engaging in subversive activities and sent me to prison. I was one of the lucky few political [...Read more]
Germany
“The jeering crowd stood below”
On the night of November 9, the Nazi regime organized violent attacks on Jews and their property throughout Germany – like at this clothing store in Magdeburg (photo). At least 400 Jews were murdered or driven to suicide. Thousands of stores, apartments, cemeteries and synagogues were damaged or destroyed. About 30,000 Jews were subsequently sent to concentration camps. The writer, translator and librarian Josepha von Koskull witnessed the pogroms in Berlin. “Close to the bank where I worked was [...Read more]
“I also had to go to Dr. Mengele”
“Arbeit macht frei” (“work makes you free”) – the Nazi’s cynical slogan still stands at the entrance to the former Auschwitz I concentration camp. Heinrich Himmler had the camp built in occupied Poland in 1940 and expanded into a huge camp complex. Approximately 1.1 million people were murdered here, including nearly 20,000 Roma and Sinti. The 92-year-old Philomena Franz describes how she arrived at the concentration camp’s so-called gypsy camp in April 1943. “In the examination room one of the SS [...Read more]
“The masses made them strong and brave”
A Soviet tank rattles through the Leipzig city center. The photo shows how Red Army units crushed the GDR uprising on June 17, 1953. A demonstration by East Berlin construction workers had triggered widespread unrest. Thousands of workers went on strike, protesting the policies of the communist regime. The teacher Wilhelm Fiebelkorn remembers the beginning and end of the uprising in the industrial city of Bitterfeld. “But then, at about 9:30, a black wall moved forward over the railroad overpass [...Read more]
"Open the window! Printing presses are coming!"
With their arms crossed in front of their chests or their hands in their pockets, five GDR opposition activists show their silent protest as they are photographed during a raid by East German secret police. In November 1987, they were printing an underground magazine when they were surprised by the Stasi. They were arrested, but released a little later following widespread protests. The printing press had been smuggled to East Berlin by a politician from the West German Green Party. In an interview, [...Read more]
“The burning curtains flapping in the bedroom”
Like most German cities, Leipzig was severely destroyed during World War II by bomb attacks from the United States and Great Britain. Four years after the war, bricks from destroyed houses were still piled up in front of the St. Thomas Church, the famous workplace of Johann Sebastian Bach (photo). About 6,000 people died in the bombing. Elke Rau, a vocational school teacher describes her experience as a child during the heaviest air raid on the city. “I was five years old in December 1943 and can [...Read more]
Russia
"What I Saw and Learned in the Kolyma Camps"
Watchtowers, palisades, barbed wire – that is how most Soviet labor camps looked. The only largely preserved camp is located near Perm. The “Gulag Archipelago” became famous primarily through the book of the same title written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent eight years of his life in various labor camps. Many other authors have also described the terror of the Stalinist era. The best known among them are Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam and Varlam Sharlamov, none of whom lived to see the end of [...Read more]
"Our daily rations depended on the amount of work accomplished”
The Gulag prisoners were forced to do hard physical labor in freezing temperatures. This wood cutting scene was captured by the painter Adam Schmidt, who was also imprisoned in a camp. The Jewish-Polish jurist Dr. Jerzy Gliksman described how the system of forced labor was organized in the Soviet Union in the late 1940s. His report for a United Nations Commission of Inquiry is one of the first eyewitness reports on the Gulag. In spite of the fact that the work was beyond the limits of our [...Read more]
“The indictment was totally extreme”
The Russian domestic intelligence agency FSB resides in this building in Moscow. It has served as the headquarters of the Soviet secret police since 1920. In the basement of the “Lubyanka,” as the building is called, hundreds of thousands of prisoners were interrogated and tortured and thousands were shot. The 17-year-old schoolgirl Susanna Petschuro was one of the people imprisoned there. She was sentenced to 25 years in a labor camp in 1951 for her participation in a circle of critical students. [...Read more]
Rwanda
![[Translate to Englisch:] Altarraum der Ntarama-Kirche mit menschlichen Knochen im Jahr 2006](/fileadmin/_processed_/7/2/csm_1280px-Ntrama_Church_Altar_5d1981f70e.jpg "Altar room in the Ntarama Church, 2006")
“They killed with all their might”
Human bones, children’s shoes, combs, scarves and other objects still lay under the benches in front of the alter of the Church of Ntarama. Francine Niyitegeka, at the time a 25-year-old shopkeeper and farmer, survived the carnage. He describes how even his neighbors took part in the killing. “The interahamwe began hunting down Tutsis on our hill on the 10th of April. The same day, we upped and left in a group, planning to stay in the church in Ntarama because they had never been known to kill [...Read more]
![[Translate to Englisch:] Eingangsschild der Kirche und Gedenkstätte Ntarama mit Angabe der Opferzahlen (5000)](/fileadmin/_processed_/2/e/csm_1280px-Ntarama_Church_Genocide_Memorial_-_Flickr_-_Dave_Proffer__11__bearb_1cde21ca8b.jpg "Sign at the entrance to the Ntarama Memorial")
“We were almost paralyzed”
Janvier Munyaneza is one of the few survivors of the massacre in the Ntarama Church. The 14-year-old shepherd hid between the dead bodies of the people who had been killed and pretended to be dead. On the website of Rwandan Stories, he describes how the Hutu militia "Interahamwe" took action against the refugees in the church. "The interahamwe prowled about the small wood around the church for three or four days. One morning, they all came in a group together, behind soldiers and local policemen. [...Read more]
![[Translate to Englisch:] Wegweiser zur Nyamata-Gedenkstätte](/fileadmin/_processed_/6/4/csm_Genocide_Memorial_Sign_with_Passing_Traffic_-_Nyamata_-_Rwanda_30444887b0.jpg "Sign showing the way to the Nyamata Church")
“We killed in teams”
Nyamata is the name of the genocide memorial in the south of Kigali where the human remains of some 50,000 people lay buried. The mass murder, which was mostly carried out with machetes and clubs, is hard to comprehend. This is why the French journalist Jean Hatzfeld questioned not only victims but also perpetrators and published the interviews in several books (see literature). Excerpts are presented on the website rwandanstories.org. In one of them a Hutu describes how the killing became routine. [...Read more]
Taiwan
“I will never forgive them”
The gymnast Chang Chang-Mei was 18 years old when she was arrested in her school in Taichung in April 1950. She was accused of belonging to an “insurgent organization.” She was not released until July 1962 – after spending twelve years and 100 days in incarceration. The Human Rights Museum accompanied Chang Chang-Mei to the sites of her persecution and documented her fate in an oral history documentary. In it she describes her imprisonment and the sounds of torture she heard at night. Click here [...Read more]
“I had no idea what my crime was”
Chang Ta-Pang was arrested in Tainan, Taiwan on August 16, 1950, two days after his 21st birthday. The secret police accused him of supporting a seditionist organization. In March 1951, a court sentenced him to ten years in prison, which he served up to the very last day. In an oral history documentary from the National Human Rights Museum, he describes how he learned about his sentence. Click here for the documentary video on Chang Ta-Pang (Chinese with English subtitles).
Tunisia
“They squeezed my testicles until I fainted”
The uniformed men stand around bored at the wide-open entrance to the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior. It is hard to imagine that people were brutally tortured behind these walls for decades. One of the victims was the then 25-year-old Zied Ben Jemaa. He was arrested in April 2005 and sentenced a year-and-a-half later by the criminal court in Tunis to twelve years in prison. In a French documentary, the active soccer player recalls the abuse he endured. “I was arrested at home on April 18, 2005 [...Read more]
“They force you to confess imaginary things”
Security forces take action against demonstrators in front of the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior in January 2011. Four years earlier, Béchir Mesbahi had been severely tortured in the building. At the age of 19, he was arrested in the city of Sousse and taken to Tunis. In the Ministry of the Interior he was forced to sit on a chair in a corridor for 32 days. In a French documentary he describes how he was tortured there. “Before my arrest I had a traffic accident in which I suffered a head [...Read more]