Our journey to the killing fields was kicked off with a visit to what is known as the S-21 Museum. S-21 stands for Security Prison 21. This was a prison that was used by the Khmer Rouge to detain and torture the Cambodians who were accused of varied crimes.

The sad part about this entire complex of buildings is the fact that The S-21 museum was originally a school. As you walk through the buildings you can see how the class rooms were converted to house the prisoners. Each floor of each building is designed differently. Some rooms have smaller cubicles that are separated by wood. Others have cubicles that are made of stone.

The balconies of these buildings are long and are lined with barbed wire mesh. It is said that this barbed wire is in place so that none of the prisoners could end their lives on their own terms.

There is a lot of information that is displayed in these halls but none is quite as unsettling as the rows and rows of photographs of the prisoners who were executed. It is said that the Khmer Rouge kept both before and after photographs of their victims. Something that struck as even more saddening is the fact that there are so many people (approximately one third of the population) who died or went missing in just 3 years of the Khmer Rouge rule.

Most of the families have no idea where their missing relatives are. They don’t know if they are alive or they are dead. The only way that they can try and locate them is by going through each and every one of those photographs that are displayed at the S-21 museum hoping against hope that they will find them. Then again it leads one to wonder whether finding their relatives face is really a good thing?