Surviving Angkar: Memories of Life and Death in Pol Pot's Kampuchea

by John Dawson

The story here told is not a nightmare. It occurred to Leakhana Om only a few decades ago and reflects stories that could be told by millions of Cambodians who were subjected to the same experiment, the 20th century's most ruthless imposition of communist totalitarianism. Countless books have been written about the Jewish genocide during World War II, but relatively few about this more recent period of mass murder of innocents by their own government, in the name of another warped ideology. This is a first-hand account of life and death under the rule of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979. When asked how she survived it, Leakhana's simple answer is: "I wanted to live." That may be the only answer that can be given. Trapped in a world that considered her life of no value and her death as no loss, she decided she wanted to live. Surviving Angkar is a compelling story of survival and deliverance, a penetrating insight into the nature of an inhumane ideology, and a timely resource of recent world history that needs to be remembered and understood in order to prevent it being repeated.

112 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 2013

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