The Holocaust is the most terrible and frightening experience any country or
any nation can come through. Unfortunately, there have already been a number
of holocausts in the world history. Violence and death is always terrific but
it touches your personally. Dith Pran, a Times correspondent, was the witness
of such tragic events in his native country, Cambodia, even more – he
came through sufferings and tortures himself, was at “the killing fields”
and suffered. It is possible to say that he returned from the hell, while his
three brothers and thousands of Cambodians died.
Dith Pran was born in Cambodia and spend his childhood near Angkor Wat. In the
1970s he started cooperating with Sydney Schanberg, the New York Times journalist,
who was reporting about the difficult situation and the war in Cambodia at that
very time. In 1975 the political situation changed – the Khmer Rouge came
to power and the communist times for this country began. All the foreigners
were deported and among this foreigners was Sydney Schanberg. The horrible period
for the native population stared: people were imprisoned. Just in 4 years from
1975 till 1979 about two million Cambodians were killed in tortures. “Mr.
Dith saw his country descend into a living hell as he scraped and scrambled
to survive the barbarous revolutionary regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to
1979, when as many as two million Cambodians — a third of the population
— were killed, experts estimate” (Douglas). However, it is only
a statistical data. The life of those who managed to survive turned into a real
horror taking into account that there was no single family without victims of
Cambodian Holocaust.
Dith Pran was one of the survivors of the Holocaust organized by the Khmer Rouge,
however, these events have had a great influence on his further life. In 1979
he was able to escape from Cambodia and arrived to the USA. He got a job as
a photographer in the New York Times and renewed his cooperation with Sydney
Schanberg. Working in the USA he never forgot his mother and the great tragedy
his nation had come through. His true mission was crusader. He did his best
to make the rest of the world realize what brought the Khner Rouge’s ruling.
In 1984 there appeared a motion picture “The Kieling Fields” in
which Diht Pran tells his own story.
Roland Joffe, the director of the film “The Killing Fields”, depicts
Dith’s life as it was in reality without exaggerations. This is realism
that makes this film so popular and allows people to watch a real life history.
He tries to escape generalization and numbers which are usually used when speaking
about the Holocaust. He turns to the lives of several people and shows Holocaust
through Dith Pran’s personal tragedy. In this situation even the smallest
details has great meaning for the director and for audience. He chooses the
glimpse of knowledge which helps him to collect real information about real
people, not bare facts and general statistical data, which are usually given
when speaking about the tragedy of Holocaust. This great film is not only an
attempt to enumerate facts. He tries to think over great tragedy which affected
the lives of millions of people. His personal account, stories of the witnesses,
letters and pictures give the readers a unique opportunity to see past events
from the new perspective.
The psychologists have found out such a tendency: people try to limit themselves
from terrible events of the past. They try to use numbers and figures in the
attempt to escape the truth. When statistic data speaks about too many deaths,
people lose the importance of each separate life because of the great scale
of the tragedy. On the example of Dith, a brave journalist, the film reminds
us that each person killed during Holocaust has his or her own history and this
history is important. Millions of people and their histories were swept away
during Holocaust. Even if we are not able to bring back these people to life
we are able to keep the memory about them and Dith Pran evidently proves it
on his own example.
Dith Pran, having come through terrible sufferings and tortures, devoted his
life to the history of his native Cambodia. He can serve as an eternal example
of bravery and remind us about such terrible events as Holocaust. Sydney Schanberg
writes about his friend in such a way: “I’m a very lucky man to
have had Pran as my reporting partner and even luckier that we came to call
each other brother. His mission with me in Cambodia was to tell the world what
suffering his people were going through in a war that was never necessary. It
became my mission too. My reporting could not have been done without him”
(Douglas). Dith Pran completed his mission and will forever stay in people’s
memory.
Works Cited
Douglas, Martin (March 31, 2008). Dith Pran, Photojournalist and Survivor of
the Killing Fields, Dies at 65. Retrieved November 20, 2008 from http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/nyregion/31dith.phpl&OQ=_rQ3D1Q26pagewantedQ3D2&OP=27e5e2dfQ2Ft2Q60ZtaDbQ20BDD-Q7DtQ7Duuwtu@t@PtCQ2BBQ60fADCt@PaA-!Q27!-GQ24
Tarsy, Andrew. (March, 2008). Dith Pran: Two views of a legend. Retrieved November
20, 2008 from
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/03/31/dith_pran_two_views_of_a_legend/?page=2
