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Forty years ago, Charles Krause was lying on the tarmac of a landing strip in the jungle in Guyana, shot from a ball in the hip, motionless and pretending to be death.
As the Washington Post's foreign correspondent at the time, Krause had come to South America with California Congressman Leo J. Ryan and his entourage to visit a far-off cult complex called Jonestown.
Ryan had voters who had joined the farming community following the reverend charismatic and eponymous Jim Jones and his California-based Peoples Temple. After hearing reports from concerned family members – who said members of the temple had been detained there against their will, assaulted and abused – the congressman decided to go down to investigate, accompanied by several members of the press .
But Jones did not intend to let the visitors leave and sent several of his armed supporters on a platform truck to stop Ryan's plane. What followed – Ryan's assassination and the killing of four others on the airfield, as well as the mass murder of more than 900 supporters of the People's Temple, including hundreds of children forced to drink a punch with cyanide-flavored grapes – would reverberate the world and leave an indelible mark on American culture.
[‘I didn’t want her to go’: The families who lost loved ones to Jonestown]
Despite his injury, Krause continued to report on Jonestown in the days that followed, filing detailed reports as the first journalist to return to the macabre website. He then wrote a best-selling book, "Massacre of Guyana: The Testimony of Eyewitnesses."
Krause, 71, who currently heads the Center for Contemporary Political Art in northwestern Washington, recently spoke to The Post before Nov. 18, the anniversary of the massacre, to evoke memories and lasting lessons from Jonestown. . The following interview has been modified for its length and clarity.
You have written a lot about Jonestown over the years. During all this time later, are there still some moments that stand out most clearly in your mind?
When I returned for the first time, I was looking for some of the people I remembered were in this flatbed truck. At that time, the bodies were there, but they did not realize they were stacked on top of each other. So they had about 450 people dead, but there were almost 500 missing or something. And so we did not know where they were … I did not find any in fact. But it turned out that almost everyone was killed.
You spent time with Peoples Temple members a few days before their assassination. Did you meet people who left a lasting impression?
There were two, a brother and a sister. When we finally got there, each of us was greeted by someone who came to tell us, "Hello, I want to welcome you to Jonestown." And it turned out that my assistants , it was what they were, were a brother and sister. Their last name was Tropp. Their origins were almost identical to mine. They were both white, Jewish, both had been educated in Ivy League schools and we really had a lot in common. They had done their research and they found who would present the best case for Jonestown. And I must say that they did it. Even after all, I still have some doubts about them. I want to say some The things that were going on there were actually good, if there had not been the psychosis of a man and the trap in which he had led them. The Tropps were not there because they believed in miracles or snake oil. They were there because they believed it was a socialist community and a place where different races and religions could be brought together.
How did you live what you lived and lived in Jonestown?
One of the things I continue to question is, why did I survive? I was right next to the congressman and they were shooting at him for sure. I was not a main target, but they were definitely there to kill everyone. But why did I survive? And it's a question that has haunted me all my life. You know, there must be a reason. And what I decided is that this reason is for me to keep trying to do everything I can to try to improve this world a bit. I guess I understood at that time that you had to live your life fully and that you can not put everything back to tomorrow, because tomorrow you may not be here.
We now have generations of people too young to remember Jonestown and who are more familiar with pop-derived references – like the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid" – than the facts of the tragedy itself. But even that sentence is not faithful to what happened, right?
Right. I remember very well, about three weeks after all, the president of Kool-Aid had said – and I was scared, you know, are we going to start with a lawsuit and all the rest? But it was just a very nice note saying, "Listen, we just wanted you to know it was not Kool-Aid, but we understand that Kool-Aid is a kind of generic for all kinds of flavored drinks. and we wish you good luck. Apparently, it was Flavor Aid. Anyway, it was mixed with cyanide – and no, people did not take it voluntarily. In fact, there is a recording and you can hear people asking, "Why are we doing this – should we really do it?" Then they had armed men. So, they do not really have a lot of choice. And children have no choice.
[The phrase ‘drank the Kool-Aid’ is completely offensive. We should stop saying it immediately.]
What do you think are Jonestown's lessons, what did she finally tell us about who we are?
Frankly, I'm not sure that at the time, the real lessons of Jonestown were very clear. You know, people focused on suicide, mass murder, bodies. Anyone who was alive at that time was a very striking image, and people might even remember Jim Jones because something in him was scary. But the real lesson of Jonestown, and I would like our country to understand this: these people followed someone who led them to destruction. They believed in this guy. He lied to them. He cheated. He has been involved in sexual abuse of boys and girls in his temple. He took their money. He really enslaved them. And then he betrayed them, then he drove them to death. I would have liked us to learn to be more careful when we follow people who promise things and then betray the trust people place in them. And I just hope that it will not happen again.
Forty years later, in a world that has changed so much, do you think that kind of thing could happen again?
Yes, it may happen again. This is repeated several times. We had Waco, and we had other incidents where there are not so many people, but it's the same kind of situation. I am convinced that we must be more skeptical of political or religious leaders who promise things, who seem to be hypocritical, who speak but do not walk.
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