Children of Cambodias Killing Fields Memoirs by Survivors

This extraordinary collection of eyewitness accounts by Cambodian survivors of Pol Pot's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s offers searing testimony to an era of brutality, brainwashing, betrayals, starvation, and gruesome executions. Each witness was a child at the time of Cambodia's holocaust, and each tells of families torn apart, loss of innocence, ceaseless struggles to survive against all odds, and ultimately the triumph of the human spirit.

These testimonies bear shattering witness to the slaughter committed by the Khmer Rouge. The contributors — most of them now living in the United States and pictured in photographs that accompany their stories — report on life in Democratic Kampuchea as seen through children's eyes. They speak of their bewilderment and pain as Khmer Rouge cadres tore their families apart, subjected them to brainwashing, drove them from their homes to work in forced-labor camps, and executed captives in front of them. Their stories tell of suffering, the loss of innocence, the struggle to survive against all odds, and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

"At this time, my family was separated. My father was imprisoned because he was suspected of being in the military during the Lon Nol reign....My sister and I were put into an orphan's home. I was four years old and my sister was three....We were afraid of ghosts because there were so many dead people around the village." –Sarah P. Tun

"The essays are profoundly moving. They are written in the voices simple and honest. They are entirely personal and yet speak about Everyman. The book is free of politics as it should be. It is not about the proud and the mighty and the originators of the trouble. It is about the small and the frightened and how life, in the face of such horror, unbelievably, goes on." Anton Ford, The Asian Reporter

"Gives voice to the unspeakable....The overwhelming simplicity of the contributor's recollections builds a solid, irrefutable censure of one of humanity's most shocking crimes." Lance Gould, New York Times Book Review

"These recollections provide a child's-eye view of their families' suffering....An important reminder of the darkest chapter in post-WWII history." Publishers Weekly

"These piercing stories of the Cambodian holocaust should be required reading in schools throughout the world. Painful though it may be to contemplate these accounts of young survivors, they desperately need to be passed, whole and without softening, from generation to generation. For it is only by such bearing of witness that the rest of us are rendered unable to pretend that true evil is exceedingly rare in the world, or worse, is but a figment. The Khmer Rouge embodied evil; the stories in this book engrave that truth in history." Sydney H. Schanberg

"Dith Pran's collection of wartime stories written by children of Cambodia's killing fields is filled with outrage and compassion. They evoke a time when, in the name of absurd and senseless ideologies, cruel rulers inflicted systematic suffering, humiliation, and death upon hundreds and thousands of their kinsmen. They must not be forgotten." Elie Wiesel

This extraordinary book contains eyewitness accounts of life in Cambodia during Pol Pot's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979, accounts written by survivors who were children at the time. The book has been put together by Dith Pran, whose own experiences in Cambodia were so graphically portrayed in the film The Killing Fields.
The testimonies related here bear poignant witness to the slaughter the Khmer Rouge inflicted on the Cambodian people. The contributors--most of them now in the United States and pictured in photographs that accompany their stories--report on life in Democratic Kampuchea as seen through children's eyes. They speak of their bewilderment and pain as Khmer Rouge cadres tore their families apart, subjected them to harsh brainwashing, drove them from their homes to work in forced-labor camps, and executed captives in front of them. Their stories tell of suffering and the loss of innocence, the struggle to survive against all odds, and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

Dith Pran is a photojournalist for the New York Times and founder of the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project. Kim DePaul is executive director of the project.