Sokha Ten Meyer was 23, married to a Cambodian army officer and the mother of two children in 1975 when Phnom Penh, her country's capital, fell to the Khmer Rouge. The city's entire population was forcibly evacuated. This was the first step in a genocide that would kill an estimated 2 million or more Cambodians in four years.
Ten Meyer and her family were banished to a series of labor camps, where she broke stones, planted rice and plowed fields. There was little to eat. Her two sons died of malnutrition within two days of each other. "There were executions every day," she said. "At night you could hear the cries: 'Why are you killing us?' 'What did I do wrong?' You heard the children crying in the background."
Read the full article at The Chicago Tribune.
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