3. Pol Pot
Saloth Sar, known as Pol Pot, was born on May 19, 1925, in Prek Sbauv, Cambodia. He was the eighth of nine children in a relatively prosperous family. After studying at a Buddhist monastery and a French Catholic school, he pursued carpentry before receiving a scholarship to study radio technology in Paris in 1949. In Paris, he became involved with the Communist Party, adopting the name Pol Pot. Returning to Cambodia in 1953, he joined the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party, which later became the Communist Party of Kampuchea (history.com). As the leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot orchestrated the Cambodian genocide from 1975 to 1979, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 1.5 to 2 million people.
