📖 Overview
Pin Yathay is a Cambodian author and survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime who documented his experiences during one of the 20th century's most brutal genocides. He fled Cambodia in 1975 when the communist forces took control and spent four years enduring forced labor, starvation, and the systematic execution of intellectuals and perceived enemies of the state.
Yathay worked as an engineer before the Khmer Rouge takeover and belonged to the educated class that Pol Pot's regime specifically targeted for elimination. His family was torn apart during the regime, with several members dying from execution, disease, and starvation.
His memoir "Stay Alive, My Son" provides a first-person account of life under the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979. The book chronicles his journey from Phnom Penh through various labor camps and his eventual escape to Thailand.
Yathay's work serves as historical testimony to the Cambodian genocide, which killed an estimated 1.5 to 2 million people. His account offers insight into the daily reality of survival under a totalitarian regime that sought to transform Cambodia into an agrarian utopia through violence and social engineering.