Tuol Sleng

Tuol Sleng was a high school in a residential area of Phnom Penh, when, in 1975, the Khmer Rouge converted it into a detention and torture center. Security Prison 21. S-21.

It still looks a little like a school, at least from the outside.



Inside it is a different story. The school rooms were turned into interrogation and torture rooms. Many of the rooms were left as they were.



Other rooms were converted into holding cells.



It is estimated that there were over 17000 people detained here during the years 1975-1979. There were only seven known survivors.



It is now a genocide museum. A document of what happened. It happened in my lifetime--I was old enought to be able to know about it, but I didn't. Not until I saw a movie called "The Killing Fields". If you haven't seen it, you should.

Some of the rooms house pictures of the people who were tortured here. The Khmer Rouge were known for keeping meticulous records.



Some are stoic, others look terrified.



There are rooms and rooms of these faces. Men, women, children, babies.



As I looked at the faces, particularly those of the children, I thought of all the kids I have been photographing in the past few weeks, and tried to imagine. I couldn't.

I was doing ok until I saw this picture. I broke down and started sobbing in the gallery. I was alone. 29 has significance for me.



In other rooms are pictures with the stories of the relatives of some of the victims.


"I think my brother is dead
because 20 years have gone by,
and he still hasn't come home.
I haven't seen him in all this time,
even in my dreams."


"All seven of her children were killed."

There is grafitti on some of the stairwell walls, placed by visitors.



Rwanda.

Darfur.

If only we would listen.