On this very bed, hundreds, if not thousands of Cambodians were tortured and killed.  This bed is now part of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh Cambodia, a converted high school turned prison for the “bad blood” during the Khmer Rouge Regime of the 1970′s.  Of the over 17,000 people known to have been imprisoned here, only twelve survived, and of those twelve only four are currently known to be alive.

This picture was taken at Tuol Sleng, the infamous site of Security Prison 21 (S-21) during the brutal regime of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970′s.  The site was previously a high school, but then converted into a prison, where over 10,000 people were torchered, and then lead off to the killing fields to be exterminated.  The name Toul Sleng literally means “poisonous hill,” a name given to the site by the Khmer Rouge because it was the site where those who were “poisoning” the new regime were held.

I have visited the site, now a genocide museum, many times, and on this occasion, saw a Cambodian woman gazing at some of the many pictures the Khmer Rouge took and so I snapped off a shot.  It is very unusual to see Cambodians in the museum, for most would rather forget the past, and live in the present.