By Jody Kurash

updated 3:10 p.m. ET July 2, 2008

KIGALI, Rwanda - Visiting places famous for death is nothing new. You can tour the Nazi concentration camps of Dachau in Germany and Auschwitz in Poland, or the killing fields of Choeung Ek in Cambodia. Tourists sought glimpses of the World Trade Center ruins within days of the Sept. 11th attacks.

Rwanda is another destination where visitors can bear witness to the mass slaughter of innocents. Macabre memorial sites scattered throughout the country mark the horrific genocide in 1994 when extremist Hutus slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

I toured some of these sites on a trip to the country last year. Churches and schools where thousands of people were murdered have not been sanitized for tourists. They include graphic displays of skulls, bones and even preserved corpses. They were horrifying, yes, and shocking. But they present an accurate depiction of the brutality and inhumanity of war and of genocide.

The most moving site I visited was a genocide memorial at the Murambi school in Gikongoro. A driver picked me up at my hotel in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, at 4 a.m. to begin the three-hour drive from there to the school. His daughter, Foufou Sabati, a university student, accompanied us, serving as an informal translator.

A guide, Rusariganwa Francois, walked me and Foufou through various classrooms. Francois said people flocked to the technical school during the genocide to seek protection from the killers, but ultimately the death squads arrived and murdered them by the thousands.

In addition to a mass grave outside, tables in each classroom are covered with bodies of the dead preserved in powdered lime. Some of the twisted, contorted bodies resist death, others appear to be resigned to their fate. Their faces are preserved in a wide range of expression, from fear to shock to sheer horror. Some defend themselves; others clutch each other. Some are adults, some children, some babies. Machete slashes are still visible on the shriveled remains. The tour continues with a room full of the bloodstained clothing worn by the victims, hanging from clotheslines.

Jody Kurash / AP The Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, became famous as the building in which more than a thousand people took refuge during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. The story of the hotel and its manager at that time, Paul Rusesabagina, was used as the basis of the movie “Hotel Rwanda.”

Back in Kigali, the Hotel des Milles Collines is another important stop. It's a working hotel in Kigali, but it was made famous by the movie "Hotel Rwanda," which tells the true story of Paul Rusesabagina and the more than 1,000 people he sheltered there during the genocide. The movie was filmed in South Africa, so visitors will not recognize any specific settings, but it's easy to imagine the scenes playing out, with the large swimming pool being used for drinking water and the frightened refugees hiding in the hallways.

Elsewhere, many ghastly massacres took place in churches where people had futilely gathered, hoping for refuge. My driver took me to the Ntarama church outside Kigali, where thousands more were killed. Purple satin banners hang on the fence outside the weathered red-brick church with a sign declaring, "Never Again."

Jody Kurash / AP Clothing belonging to the victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide is shown hanging on a clothesline at the Murambi Genocide Memorial Site outside of Gikongoro, Rwanda.

The 12-foot high ceiling is pocked with bullet holes and stained with blood. Many of the church's 10,000 victims were either hacked to death with machetes or clubbed. A statue of the Virgin Mary remains caked in mud. Another display case commemorates the visit of Pope John Paul II. A third case is filled with skulls of the victims staring out in horror at the visitor. A small room near the altar overflows to the ceiling with the unwashed clothing of victims.

A storm had knocked out the power the day I visited, leaving me tiptoeing though the dark as I explored the crypts under the church. Hundreds of skulls and bones, may of them cracked and broken, lined a narrow corridor and only became visible when my camera strobe flashes in the darkened cavern. It was unnerving.

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