Lowell Sun
By Robert Mills, rmills@lowellsun.com
03/31/2008
LOWELL -- Dith Pran survived the killing fields, four years of beatings and enslavement that claimed the lives of nearly 2 million Cambodians, and in 1979, he escaped to the United States, where he told his story.
That story, portrayed in the Oscar-winning 1984 film The Killing Fields, helped spread awareness of the Cambodian genocide to the United States, where Dith, at 65, finally ended his journey yesterday.
Dith died of pancreatic cancer in a New Jersey hospital, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague at The New York Times. Dith had been diagnosed almost three months ago.
Dith Pran was born Sept. 27, 1942, at Siem Reap, site of the famed 12th century ruins of Angkor Wat. As with many Asians, the family name, Dith, came first, but he was known by his given name, Pran.
In Lowell, where some estimates put the Cambodian population as high as 30,000, most Cambodians over 35 lived through the horror, which remains a difficult subject because so many wounds remain so raw, according to community leaders.
Vong Ros, executive director of Lowell's Cambodian Mutual Assistance Agency, said Dith is highly regarded throughout the community, where news of his death was beginning to spread last night.
"Through the movie, mainstream Americans got a glimpse of what happened to the Cambodians who lived during the Khmer Rouge years," Ros said.
The film told the story of Dith and Schanberg, who Dith worked with in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, when the Vietnam War ended in 1975, and both counties were taken over by Communist forces.
Schanberg helped Dith's family get out but was forced to leave his friend behind.
The regime of Pol Pot, bent on turning Cambodia back into a strictly agrarian society, and his Communist zealots were blamed for the deaths of nearly 2 million of Cambodia's 7 million people.
With thousands executed simply for manifesting signs of intellect or Western influence -- even wearing eyeglasses or wristwatches -- Dith survived by masquerading as an uneducated peasant, toiling in the fields and subsisting on as little as a mouthful of rice a day.
Dith and Schanberg were reunited when Dith escaped 4 1/2 years later.
Eventually, Dith resettled in the United States and went to work as a photographer for The Times.
It was Dith himself who coined the term "killing fields" for the horrifying clusters of corpses and skeletal remains of victims he encountered on his desperate journey to freedom.
After Dith moved to the U.S., he became a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, dedicated to educating people on the history of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Local Cambodian leaders, such as Sambath Fennell of Lowell, say Dith never realized how much he had done to raise awareness.
"He was able to make his struggle heard in the public, and by doing that, he doesn't realize that he changed a lot of lives," Fennell said. "He eased some of the pain."
Samkhann Khoeun, former director of the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Agency, who survived the Khmer Rouge and came to the U.S. in 1984, compared the pain to a car accident or a fire.
"Within that period of feeling, there is half an hour or 45 minutes, I think you multiply that by four years," he said. "That's how deep and how painful that feeling is."
Ros said that's why it's so difficult for many to speak of their experiences, as Dith did.
Ros went through it, but he was younger. He said it's even harder for the older generations, who in some cases watched almost their entire family be dragged to death or die of starvation.
Fennell said he hopes the death will once again raise awareness of the atrocities as several of the Khmer Rouge leaders only now await trial on charges related to what happened. Many who survived are hopeful to finally have a bit of closure if justice is served.
The New York Times reported in an obituary published today that Pran had continued to hope, even in his last weeks, that others would continue his work.
"If others can do that for me," the paper quotes him as saying, "my spirit will be happy."
Filling the shoes of such a man will be a challenge, according to Khoeun.
"You're trying to educate and tell the story like Dith Pran did, bravely, courageously until his last minute," Khoeun said. "Will we ever find someone to step into his shoes and carry on his legacy?
"It's really challenging, but yet we have to continue telling the story," he added. "We have to continue saying the pain and the suffering, and hopefully through education, we'll stop the genocide, the holocaust, the killing field from happening around the world."
By Robert Mills, rmills@lowellsun.com
03/31/2008
LOWELL -- Dith Pran survived the killing fields, four years of beatings and enslavement that claimed the lives of nearly 2 million Cambodians, and in 1979, he escaped to the United States, where he told his story.
That story, portrayed in the Oscar-winning 1984 film The Killing Fields, helped spread awareness of the Cambodian genocide to the United States, where Dith, at 65, finally ended his journey yesterday.
Dith died of pancreatic cancer in a New Jersey hospital, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague at The New York Times. Dith had been diagnosed almost three months ago.
Dith Pran was born Sept. 27, 1942, at Siem Reap, site of the famed 12th century ruins of Angkor Wat. As with many Asians, the family name, Dith, came first, but he was known by his given name, Pran.
In Lowell, where some estimates put the Cambodian population as high as 30,000, most Cambodians over 35 lived through the horror, which remains a difficult subject because so many wounds remain so raw, according to community leaders.
Vong Ros, executive director of Lowell's Cambodian Mutual Assistance Agency, said Dith is highly regarded throughout the community, where news of his death was beginning to spread last night.
"Through the movie, mainstream Americans got a glimpse of what happened to the Cambodians who lived during the Khmer Rouge years," Ros said.
The film told the story of Dith and Schanberg, who Dith worked with in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, when the Vietnam War ended in 1975, and both counties were taken over by Communist forces.
Schanberg helped Dith's family get out but was forced to leave his friend behind.
The regime of Pol Pot, bent on turning Cambodia back into a strictly agrarian society, and his Communist zealots were blamed for the deaths of nearly 2 million of Cambodia's 7 million people.
With thousands executed simply for manifesting signs of intellect or Western influence -- even wearing eyeglasses or wristwatches -- Dith survived by masquerading as an uneducated peasant, toiling in the fields and subsisting on as little as a mouthful of rice a day.
Dith and Schanberg were reunited when Dith escaped 4 1/2 years later.
Eventually, Dith resettled in the United States and went to work as a photographer for The Times.
It was Dith himself who coined the term "killing fields" for the horrifying clusters of corpses and skeletal remains of victims he encountered on his desperate journey to freedom.
After Dith moved to the U.S., he became a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, dedicated to educating people on the history of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Local Cambodian leaders, such as Sambath Fennell of Lowell, say Dith never realized how much he had done to raise awareness.
"He was able to make his struggle heard in the public, and by doing that, he doesn't realize that he changed a lot of lives," Fennell said. "He eased some of the pain."
Samkhann Khoeun, former director of the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Agency, who survived the Khmer Rouge and came to the U.S. in 1984, compared the pain to a car accident or a fire.
"Within that period of feeling, there is half an hour or 45 minutes, I think you multiply that by four years," he said. "That's how deep and how painful that feeling is."
Ros said that's why it's so difficult for many to speak of their experiences, as Dith did.
Ros went through it, but he was younger. He said it's even harder for the older generations, who in some cases watched almost their entire family be dragged to death or die of starvation.
Fennell said he hopes the death will once again raise awareness of the atrocities as several of the Khmer Rouge leaders only now await trial on charges related to what happened. Many who survived are hopeful to finally have a bit of closure if justice is served.
The New York Times reported in an obituary published today that Pran had continued to hope, even in his last weeks, that others would continue his work.
"If others can do that for me," the paper quotes him as saying, "my spirit will be happy."
Filling the shoes of such a man will be a challenge, according to Khoeun.
"You're trying to educate and tell the story like Dith Pran did, bravely, courageously until his last minute," Khoeun said. "Will we ever find someone to step into his shoes and carry on his legacy?
"It's really challenging, but yet we have to continue telling the story," he added. "We have to continue saying the pain and the suffering, and hopefully through education, we'll stop the genocide, the holocaust, the killing field from happening around the world."
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