Galley Slaves

Next month Philip Short's long-awaited biography, Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare (Henry Holt), comes out, and from my brief perusal of an advanced copy, the term "nightmare" cannot begin to describe the horrors Pol Pot unleashed on the Cambodian people. Especially disturbing are the passages regarding S-21, the notorious interrogation camp where almost 20,000 prisoners were executed. But as Short explains, "the role of S-21 was not to kill but to extract confessions. Death was the finality, but it was almost incidental." Incidental or not, the unspeakable acts of torture, murder, and infanticide must not be forgotten. (And those who had shrugged off the threat of the Khmer Rouge must also face up to the terror to which they had once turned a blind eye.) It must have been a dreadful task, assembling such a history. For this, Short should be thanked.