Genocidal Museum of Toul Sleng

In 1975, Toul Sleng high school was taken over by Pol Pot's security forces and turned it into a prison known as Security Prison 21 (or S-21 prison). It soon became the largest such center of detention and torture in the country. Over 17,000 people held at S-21 were taken to the extermination camp at Choeung Ek killing field to be executed; detainees who died during the torture were buried in mass graves in the prison grounds. S-21 has been turned into the Toul sleng Genocidal Museum, which serves as a testament to the crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime. The museum's entrance is on the western side of Street 113, just north of Street 350 and it is open at 7:00-11:30 am and from 2:00-5:30 pm daily excepts Mondays.

Like the Nazis Hitler in Germany, the Khmer Rouge (reign of terror) was meticulous in keeping records of its barbarism. Each prisoner who passed through S-21 was photographed, sometimes beforew and after being tortured. It displays include room after room of these photographs of men, women and children covering the walls from floor to ceiling; virtually 99.99% all of the people pictured were later killed with blooded top pain. They can tell in what year a picture was taken by the style of number-board that appears on each prisoner's chest. Several foreigners from Australia, France, the US, Italy, Vietnam and Chinese were held here before being murdered most brutally and painfully. All of them were charged with the secret agents or spies of the CIA, KGB, the West or Youn (bad word to call the Vietnamese). Their documents are on display. It is worth paying $2 to have a guide show you around, as they can tell you the detail story behind some of the people in the photographs. In general, all photographs, paintings, and records of atrocities committed by the young Khmer Rouge during the Pol Pot regime are daily displayed for the research and visit of all travelers and students. At least, 100 were killed a day here. When the Vietnamese army, under the permission of the ex-USSR, liberated Phnom Penh in early 1979, it found only 7 prisoners alive at S-21 prison, who fortunately escaped from the killing or were buried under the corpses The last fourteen others had been tortured todeath as the Vietnamese forces were closing in on the city, their corpses were found and their graves are nearby in the courtyard. Toul Sleng makes visitors feel profoundly depressing experience and "Horrific!" And some of them dropped their tears when leaving the museum.