Pol Pot in Cambodia

In Cambodia, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge murdered 2 million of their own people. This former high school was turned into their interrogation and torture center, where people could be held for 3 to 6 weeks until they just died or were sent to the killing fields for execution.

The school was chosen to set the communist example that everyone is equal and education does not count for anything. When Pol Pot entered Phnom Penh the first people rounded up were, lawyers, doctors, teachers, artists, and anyone representing government. Then they gathered their families as they did not want to leave the children to exact revenge for the parents deaths.

The hundreds of portrait photos they took of their victims, are a haunting memory of men, women and children who simply disappeared. When their power was over, the remaining Khmer Rouge, many of whom were recruited as children, simply fled to the country, hiding their identity and trying to forget the horrible things they had done.

Pol Pot died in 1998 of a heart attack.