the killing fields

the devastation that met so many Cambodians in the years of the Khmer Rouge's rule is unthinkable. a day frought with emotion and much sadness as I visited the Tuol Sleng Museum, once the Tuol Svay Prey High School, turned Security Prison 21, the largest center of detention and torture in the country. the spaces where so many innocent lives were lost, chambers with rusty beds, wooden cells in which there was room only for grief. the survivors of this prison were taken to the killing fields of Cheoung Ek, which became the memorial of these 17,000 men, women and children who were so wrongfully executed. 129 mass graves, sights of a dark and somber past that will remain with me as I journey through history.