In 1966, I was one of Chairman Mao Zedong's Red Guards. Myself and millions of other middle and high school students started denouncing our teachers, friends, families and raiding homes and destroying other people's possessions. Textbooks explain the Cultural Revolution -- in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed and millions more abused and traumatized -- as a political movement started and led by Mao "by mistake," but in reality it was a massive catastrophe for which we all bear responsibility.

A recent photo of Yu Xiangzhen

On May 16, 1966, I was practicing calligraphy with my 37 classmates when a high-pitched voice came from the school's loudspeaker, announcing the central government's decision to start what it called a "Cultural Revolution." It was my first year of junior high, I was just 13.

"Fellow students, we must closely follow Chairman Mao," the speaker bellowed. "Get out of the classroom! Devote yourselves to the Cultural Revolution!" Two boys rushed out of door, heading to the playground yelling something. I left more slowly, holding hands with my best friend Haiyun as we followed everyone else outside. It would be my last normal day of school. As Red Guards, we subjected anyone perceived as "bourgeois" or "revisionist" to brutal mental and physical attacks. I regret most what we did to our homeroom teacher Zhang Jilan. I was one of the most active students -- if not the most revolutionary -- when the class held a struggle session against Ms. Zhang. I pulled accusations out of nowhere, saying she was a heartless and cold woman, which was entirely false. Others accused her of being a Christian because the character "Ji" in her name could refer to Christianity. Our groundless criticisms were then written into "big character" posters -- a popular way of criticizing "class enemies" and spreading propaganda -- 60 of them in total, which covered the exterior walls of our classroom building. Not long after, she was sent to the cowshed -- a makeshift prison for intellectuals and other "bourgeois elements" -- and suffered all kinds of humiliation and abuse. It wasn't until 1990 that I saw her again. During a class trip to the Great Wall, we made a formal apology to Ms. Zhang -- then in her 80s -- for what we had subjected her to. We asked what had happened to her in the cowshed. "It wasn't too bad," she said. "I was made to crawl like a dog on the ground." Hearing this, I burst into tears. I was not yet 14, and I had made her life a misery. She died two years after our apology.

At the height of the movement in 1968, people were publicly beaten to death every day during struggle sessions; others who had been persecuted threw themselves off tall buildings. Nobody was safe and the fear of being reported by others -- in many cases our closest friends and family members -- haunted us. At first, I was determined to be a good little revolutionary guard. But something bothered me. When I saw a student pour a bucket of rotten paste over our school principal in 1966, I sensed something wasn't right. I headed back to my dorm quietly, full of discomfort and guilt, thinking I wasn't revolutionary enough.

Yu Xiangzhen, circled, and her family in the 1970s. Later, when I was given a belt and told to whip an "enemy of the revolution", I ran away and was called a deserter by my fellow Red Guards. That same summer I caught a glimpse of Chairman Mao -- our Red Sun -- at Tiananmen Square, along with a million of other equally enthusiastic kids. I remember overwhelming feelings of joy. It wasn't until much later that I realized by blind idolization of Mao was a kind of worship even more fanatic than a cult. My father, a former war correspondent with state news agency Xinhua, was framed as a spy and denounced. But behind closed doors he warned my brother and I to "use our brains before taking action." "Don't do anything you will regret for the rest of your lives," he said. Slowly I began to hate Mao's wife Jiang Qing, who was a key leader of the Revolution, and I bowed grudgingly when my work unit had our mandatory daily worship ritual in front of the Chairman's image.

My generation grew up drinking wolf's milk: we were born with hatred, and taught to struggle and hate everyone. Some of my fellow Red Guards argue that we were just innocent children led astray. But we were wrong. It pains me that many of my generation choose to forget the past and some even reminisce about the "good old days" when they could travel the country as privileged, carefree Red Guards. I do not confess because I committed fewer sins or experienced fewer hardships than others.

I bear responsibility for many tragedies and abuses, and I can only express my regret to those who lost their loved ones during the Cultural Revolution. But I do not ask for forgiveness. I want to tell the truths of the Cultural Revolution as someone who lived through the madness and chaos, to warn people of the spectacular destructiveness, so that we can avoid ever repeating it.

Fifty years on, however, I am worried by the increasing leader-worship we see in state media, similar to the ideological fervor that surrounded Mao. We must stay vigilant. We can't have the gruesome brutality of the Cultural Revolution start again.

Mr. Chen, a composer who now lives in France, was a student at a middle school in Beijing when the movement began. He spent three years in a re-education labor camp outside the city.

I have always been a very direct speaker. When the Cultural Revolution was starting, I spoke out about what I was seeing. The day after I said something, a big-character poster appeared on campus overnight: “Save the reactionary speechmaker Chen Qigang.” I was so young. I didn’t understand what was going on. Yesterday we were all classmates. How come today all of my classmates are my enemies? Everyone started to ignore me. I didn’t understand. How could people be like this? Even my older sister, who was also at my school, came to find me and asked, “What’s wrong with you?” You saw in one night who your real friends were. The next day I only had two friends left. One of them is now my wife.

At the time, no one really knew who was for or against the revolution. It was completely out of control. The students brought elderly people into the school and beat them. They beat their teachers and principals. There was nothing in the way of law. There was a student who was two or three years older than me. He beat two elderly people to death with his bare hands. No one has talked about this even until this day. We all know who did it but that’s the way it is. No one has ever looked into it. These occurrences were too common.

If there had been no Cultural Revolution, then I would not be who I am today. People who haven’t been through it can’t appreciate how easy everything else is. It wasn’t the manual labor. That’s a different kind of hardship. This was the worst kind of bitterness. You are constantly told: “You are against the revolution, so therefore you have no right to speak. You don’t have freedom. You will have no future in this place. You will not have a good job. Everyone looks down on you.”

That burden, that burden on your spirit, is very heavy. It was very different later when I went to France. I could have been criticized. I could have had a different opinion on something artistic. But for me that was nothing. It is nothing. Because it doesn’t affect my freedom.

Wu Qing, 78

Ms. Wu, a human rights activist and retired professor, was teaching at a university in Beijing when the movement began. Her parents were prominent intellectuals. I knew I would become a target because of my parents. My daddy served in the Kuomintang government and later was labeled a rightist. My mom had been labeled a reactionary writer, an unpunished rightist, and a running dog of the imperialists. But nothing happened to my parents until July or August 1966, when the Red Guards went to my home. My parents were forced to kneel on the ground for over three hours. At the time, my sister’s son was only a little over 2 months. The auntie was carrying him and she had to kneel down. It was feeding time, and they refused to let him be fed.

They searched our home and took everything away. They were like robbers, they went in and took whatever they wanted. Then they locked the rooms. My parents stayed in a room smaller than 10 square meters. The students took away the cutting knives. They were afraid that my parents would commit suicide.

Then Minzu University held an exhibition. The Red Guards put all the things they had collected from the different families together and said they were all my parents’ stuff. They called it: “Exhibition of the Bourgeois Life of Wu Wenzao and Xie Bingxin.” There were pieces of gold, jade, silver and a lot of stuff. My parents had to stand outside of the exhibition every day for 10 days carrying a blackboard around their neck. At the time, I was at my school. I couldn’t leave because there were struggle sessions against me. There were close to 80 in total. They said that because of my family background I could never love socialism and the Communist Party. The students couldn’t support me in public. But sometimes after the struggle sessions, they would come up to me when there was no one else around and apologize and say they were forced to do it.

I never told my parents what happened to me. We never talked about it.