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In 1976 a high school in Phnom Penh was converted into an extermination and interrogation camp named Tuol Sleng. All of the classrooms were converted into prison cells and torture chambers.

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Now Tuol Sleng is a musuem. Some rooms have been left alone. At the top of one door the classroom name is written in French. Tally marks made by former prisoners are scratched into the wall. Rusty iron bars, where shackles were attached to multiple inmates, jut out of the floor. Small rooms are divided up into claustrophobic brick and wood cells barely larger than a human body. Another room holds the frame of a bed. Someone placed a white flower on it in remembrance. Above the bed is a large picture of a bloodied, naked and dead Cambodian.

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One of the buildings has been cleared of cells, beds and instruments of torture. The walls are lined with pictures of prisoners: women, men, children, Cambodians, monks, foreigners. As you walk through the former classrooms, thousands of faces stare back at you. In their last picture taken, each photo reveals a final emotion. Bruises on their face, some were defiant, others scared, confused or numb. Each face brings the horror closer. Over 10,000 people died in the prison from 1976-78. The final room of the museum has a wall sized map of Cambodia. The map is made of human skulls. The Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers run through the country blood red.