Saturday, June 1, 2024

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum


Other rooms contain only a rusting iron bedframe, beneath a black and white photograph showing the room as it was found by the Vietnamese. In each photograph, the mutilated body of a prisoner is chained to the bed, killed by his fleeing captors only hours before the prison was captured. Other rooms preserve leg-irons and instruments of torture. They are accompanied by paintings by former inmate Vann Nath showing people being tortured, which were added by the post-Khmer Rouge regime installed by the Vietnamese in 1979.

Federal: Loyal to the government of the United States. Also known as Union, Yankee, or Northern.

Percussion Arm: A musket or rifle-musket that requires a cap to fire. A tiny cap is placed on the gun so that when a trigger is pulled, the hammer strikes the cap. The chemical in the cap (fulminate of mercury) ignites and flame shoots into the chamber that holds the gunpowder. This ignites the powder and the blast shoots the bullet out of the barrel. (Percussion means striking�"a drum is a percussion instrument and a gun that uses a hammer to strike a cap is a percussion arm.)

Confederacy: Also called the South or the Confederate States of America, the Confederacy incorporated the states that seceded from the United States of America to form their own nation. Confederate states were: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

Bombproof: A field fortification which was made to absorb the shock of artillery strikes. It was constructed of heavy timbers and its roof was covered with soil.

Stockade: A line of tall stout posts securely set either as a defense, to keep the enemy out, or as a pen to keep prisoners in.

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