Cheoung Ek Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Museum

Visits to both of these areas are sobering and depressing but an important visit, to show that we can not ignore the recent past and the atrocities of 1975-1978. I left feeling somewhat helpless and still completely unable to understand why ?
The visit to the genocide Museum - Khmer Rouge S21 Prison Tuol Sleng shows an converted school building that housed over 1,200 people at one time and tells the story of ordinary people detained for months, tortured and then transported to Choeung Ek (Killing Fields). I would advise to do both sites, it does help with connecting information but in my case, not with understanding how this could happen in the 1970's ( let alone what is happening elsewhere in the world now - don't we learn?
Read on at your own risk.



Tuol Sleng -Exhibition of stories and resumes of ordinary people, well documented at the time
Choeung Ek - some of the 8,000 skulls in the memorial
Choeung Ek Memorial to the 20,000+ victims and as a memorial to the spirits of all 3 million lives lost in the regime (1975-79)
Choeung Ek : is a peaceful place today and in the background a school with children playing brings some hope to the recovery from the horrors. Everyone there on the day I visited were respectful and took time out to view the peaceful scenes.

Tuol Sleng converted school, classrooms as prison cells, some divided into many small cells of brick boxes
Tuol Sleng - identities of ordinary Cambodians and several foreigners, only 7 from 20,000 survived from a notice in the museum
Tuol Sleng
Tuol Sleng : no merriment - it is such a cold, depressing place only the truly hardened or absolute naive would fail to observe this simple request.