Dith
Pran was a photojournalist and a survivor of the Cambodian Genocide. The Academy
Award-winning movie, The Killing Fields was based on Dith Pran's real-life
experiences during the Vietnam War. As a photojournalist covering the civil war
in Cambodia from 1972 to 1975, Dith Pran saved the lives of his fellow Western
journalists when they were held for execution. He suffered through four years
of torture and starvation in the Cambodian killing fields -- the Cambodian forced
labor camps -- before he escaped.
Dith
Pran and his sister were the only ones in his family who survived the genocide
-- in all he lost nearly 50 relatives. He started the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness
Project to help educate American students about the genocide that took place in
Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. He believed that although mass killings have occurred
again and again in different places around the world, together we can prevent
genocide from happening in the future. Dith Pran was appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador
by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and in 1998, he received
an Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
