Post from Michelle:
The images made my eyes physically hurt. Tim and I toured the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. The 3-story buildings, surrounded by thick walls and barbed wire, were once a children's school. But in 1976 the Khmer Rouge regime converted it into a prison called Security Office 21 (S-21). Used for interrogating and torturing those the KR deemed as opposition, over 17,000 people passed through the prison before being exterminated at the famous Killing Fields outside of town.
The museum grounds were peaceful as birds sang in plumeria trees and sunshine reflected off playground equipment sitting in a grassy area. Yet there was a disturbing quiet in the air. Disturbing because I knew in this place so many lives were silenced and that the present quiet seemed only to scream the past horrors.
Touring the museum was a sad and sobering experience. On exhibit were rooms used for torture and classrooms converted into cells to house the prisoners. The Khmer Rouge took pictures of every person who entered S-21 and the museum displayed their black and white portraits row after row and room after room. Haunting faces of men, women, and children lined the walls, their eyes telling stories of pain, defiance, terror, or resignation to their fate. Tourists walked around the displays numbly, trying to comprehend how and why fellow humans could be so cruel to one another.
It was a sobering experience and a vivid reminder of the atrocities that had occurred not too long ago here in Cambodia.
The museum grounds were peaceful as birds sang in plumeria trees and sunshine reflected off playground equipment sitting in a grassy area. Yet there was a disturbing quiet in the air. Disturbing because I knew in this place so many lives were silenced and that the present quiet seemed only to scream the past horrors.
Touring the museum was a sad and sobering experience. On exhibit were rooms used for torture and classrooms converted into cells to house the prisoners. The Khmer Rouge took pictures of every person who entered S-21 and the museum displayed their black and white portraits row after row and room after room. Haunting faces of men, women, and children lined the walls, their eyes telling stories of pain, defiance, terror, or resignation to their fate. Tourists walked around the displays numbly, trying to comprehend how and why fellow humans could be so cruel to one another.It was a sobering experience and a vivid reminder of the atrocities that had occurred not too long ago here in Cambodia.