Channy Laux came to America as a teenager. She quickly learned English. She put herself through school. She got a job in Silicon Valley as an engineer and climbed the ladder of success within the aerospace and biotech industries. She fell in love, got married, and started a family. In 2017, she started her own food business, bringing Cambodian ingredients to American kitchens. It is the story of an immigrant who comes to America and achieves the American Dream.
From the outside looking in, Laux has lived the coveted life. But to know Laux and her experience―to know why she had no choice but to come to the United States―is to see her life in a much harsher light. Laux is a survivor of what is known as the Killing Fields of Cambodia, when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge took power from 1975 to 1979. Her father and brother were among the 2 million killed, which was approximately a quarter of the population. When she arrived in America, she carried with her the anguish, fear, and sorrow that comes with escaping genocide.
Laux’s story is one of the many millions that could be told about the brutality of communist dictatorships. Her story as an American immigrant provides a perspective of polar opposites between freedom and tyranny. With the help of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, she has been able to tell her story to a much wider audience.
“She tells her story, and each time, she has to relive the losses and the repression and the horribleness of it,” said Elizabeth Spalding, founding director of the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington, D.C. “But she does it because she knows that by telling her story, she’s reaching more people than you or I could, even though we would be moved by such a story.”
