Phnom Penh, Cambodia: This high school turned prison was the home of tens of thousands of Cambodians under the oppressive Khmer Rouge regime. Pol Pot, the leader of the regime, ruled the country by terror from 1975 to 1979, during which an estimated two million Cambodians were killed. Tuol Sleng, which is located near the infamous killing fields, was an intermediate destination, the last stop on the way to an almost certain death. Prisoners lived under the most horrific of conditions, most being subject to routine torture. The museum has preserved the bleak reality of the Khmer Rouge years, adding only small interpretive signs, describing what different instruments of torture where used for. Because the regime documented its national project of death with painstaking detail, there are thousands of photos of detainees and descriptions of mass murders, all of which are on display at the museum.
