Ty Tim was a high school teacher in Cambodia in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took over. The country, which had suffered years of strife during the Vietnam war and massive U.S. bombing in its wake, now fell victim to Pol Pot’s efforts to transform it into a land of peasant farmers. The plan called for the eradication of religion, culture, and history, and it was brutally enforced. The calendar was reset to year zero, temples were destroyed, educated city dwellers were declared the enemy. Capital city Phnom Penh was emptied–“turned into a ghost town,” Tim says. He and his family were among the thousands forced to trek through the jungle to labor camps, where they were subjected to inhumane conditions and fed a starvation diet. During the three years and eight months of the Khmer Rouge regime, about 1.7 million Cambodians–more than 20 percent of the population–died. Tim and his wife lost four children, as well as his parents and two brothers.
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Retired from full-time teaching, Tim now works as the archivist at the Cambodian American Heritage Museum, which opened in 2004 as a project of the Cambodian Association of Illinois. Started by a few refugee families in the western suburbs 31 years ago, the association has been located in Chicago since 1980, providing resettlement help and basic social services to Cambodian immigrants. In 1999 it purchased and moved into an old building at 2831 W. Lawrence with an empty lot next door. It also began a capital campaign, not only to add office space but to build a dream: a museum that would tell Cambodians’ story, honor their dead, and display their culture. It would be for the public but also for the elders forced to leave everything behind and for their American children, making their way in a very different society.
After raising $1.3 million, the Cambodian Association added a handsome 4,000-square-foot museum to its building three years ago. It opened with a permanent Killing Fields memorial and a text-and-photo exhibit that explained what had happened to Khmer Rouge survivors, but it had no collection of its own–none of the ancient artifacts.
Khmer Spirit: Arts & Culture of Cambodia
Miscellany
