Don't ever think that the Holocaust can't happen again...It already has. In Cambodia..

[Stuart G]

I taught in a high school in Chicago. After I showed a movie on the Holocaust, called "Night and Fog" (the most horrific movie I have ever seen) After the film was over, two students came up for a talk. I think it was early 90s..not sure.. One had parents from Pakistan, and the other was from another Asian country I did not know. The school because its geography was multicultural and multi ethnic. Students from everywhere.

Anyway, the student with Pakistan parents, (I think he was born here) spoke for the very quiet, but bright student from Cambodia. (unfortunately, do not remember the names) The first student told of what had happened to his friend from Cambodia. In the early 70s, the Khmer Rouge, came to his house, looking for his father who was a well known teacher and intellectual..As the mother and her son, my student, jumped out the back window, they came in and killed the father for his political views. Shot him dead right there. Mom and the son (I do not know if there were other children) made their way to some sort of safe haven..and later to the United States and then to Chicago. The story is beyond imagination..I showed a movie, and someone in the class experienced the exact same horror that the movie depicted. It was after the class was over, that we had the conversation..I was stunned, and am still bothered when I think of this more than 20 years later..I need to add that it is estimated that a couple of million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge during this time..

I honestly believe this kind of thing can happen again. We cannot be too vigilant ..thanks for reading this..

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. The movie about the Khmer Rouge is called "The Killing Fields."

It came out in 1984 and won several Oscars. I highly recommend it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields_(film)

[Stuart G]

2. Thank You for posting that..I have not seen it.

I heard about it, and it too is horrific.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. I had it on videocassette

but I found it hard to watch because it was so disturbing (I can't watch it at all any more because I don't have an operating VCR). Still, it's a terrific film and very much worth seeing.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. Phew. Powerful film.

Probably a must-see for any serious student of history.

[JimGinPA]

4. I Met Dith Pran At A Luncheon A Few Years After The Movie...

He spoke about his experience, and even though I had seen 'The Killing Fields', hearing his first hand account was chilling.

[tblue37]

15. Haing S. Ngor (the actor who starred in that film as Dith Pran) was murdered

by men who were trying to rob him.

Charged with the murder were three reputed members of the "Oriental Lazy Boyz" street gang, who had prior arrests for snatching purses and jewelry. They were tried together in the Superior Court of Los Angeles, though their cases were heard by three separate juries.[8] Prosecutors argued that they killed Ngor because, after handing over his gold Rolex watch willingly, he refused to give them a locket that contained a photo of his deceased wife, My-Huoy.

He was also a Cambodian who fled to the US after been imprisoned in a Khmer Rouge concentration camp.

[Archae]

5. The worst part about the Killing Fields...

The head of that butchery was Pol Pot.
His insane vision of a pure agricultural led to even anyone with glasses being usually beaten to death or shot.

"On the night of 15 April 1998, two days before the 23rd anniversary of the Khmer Rouge takeover of Phnom Penh, the Voice of America, of which Pol Pot was a devoted listener, announced that the Khmer Rouge had agreed to turn him over to an international tribunal. According to his wife, he died in his bed later that night while waiting to be moved to another location. Ta Mok claimed that his death was due to heart failure.[62] Ta Mok later described the way he died: "He was sitting in his chair waiting for the car to come. But he felt tired. His wife asked him to take a rest. He laid down on his bed. His wife heard a gasp of air. It was the sound of dying. When she touched him he had already died. It was at 10:15 last night."[63]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot#Death

[ProudLib72]

6. I wonder about why we don't know or outright ignore

genocide in certain locations. Why the disparity? Is it because there were so many Jewish refugees who came to the US from concentration camps with so many stories of horror that we are more familiar with the Holocaust? Is it because we did not win in Vietnam that we would rather ignore what happened there? Perhaps the worst perpetrator of mass killing was Stalin, but he was our ally during the war. As always, politics has a way of censoring information.

[Stuart G]

7. You hit it !!..Stalin killed 20 million, 10 million, more, less.?

Only after Stalin died, did the truth come out...and if I recall, it was Nikita Khrushchev who was the first to point the finger at Stalin as a mass killer..

[ProudLib72]

9. I've heard up to 30 million

Whatever the final count was, it was astronomical. If I recall, those purges came right before the war. It would have been distasteful to discuss them when we were allies with the Soviets.

Maybe the idea of genocide is so abhorrent that we choose to ignore it when it is happening half-way round the world. The alternative is terrible to contemplate: we don't care what happens to people in another country so long as it doesn't affect us. That's why I think Holocaust survivors felt a responsibility to tell their stories and force people to listen. Otherwise, the horror would have been downplayed.

Don't take this personally, because I'm not trying to blame anyone. I think this applies to 99% of us. Let's suppose you heard a few stories about Vietnam but never had those students. Would you have had the same reaction to those stories? I know that I saw The Killing Fields, but I can't remember a single thing about the movie. It's only when we are confronted, in person, by someone who has lived through the nightmare that it somehow starts to hit home.

I had a student about ten years ago. He was Somalian. He was kind of a pest, always being contradictory. We would kid each other. Then, one day, in the midst of our banter, he told the story of how he escaped the civil war. He described how he was fleeing his town with one of his good friends. All of a sudden, he heard a noise and turned to see his friend's head get blown off. They were about ten years old at the time. Thinking about this still gives me goosebumps. I tried to imagine this student at ten years old witnessing his friend being murdered. What does that do to a person? Honestly, I felt like just giving him an A right then and there for what he had gone through.

[madokie]

8. I'm bothered by what we did to the Native Americans

way back yonder when

[ProudLib72]

10. Point taken

And I agree that we have committed our own genocide. I'm bothered by what we continue to do to Natives, like at Standing Rock.

[Stuart G]

11. I was thinking the same thing..

In the name of "expansion" unknown numbers were killed due to outright killing or taking their lands..or both.
"Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown..tells some of the story. But most of the story is beyond belief...Like the killing of 30 million Russians by Stalin, or 8 to 10 million in the concentration camps by the Nazis. ...also, it is estimated tens of millions were killed by the Nazis when they invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

[tblue37]

14. I think the film record of the concentration camps and the fact that Germany was a "civilized"

Western European country known for its art, literature, music, and philosophy had a lot to do with the fact that people in the US and other Western countries just couldn't wrap their minds around the idea that such atrocities had been committed right in the middle of Europe.

[tblue37]

12. Rwanda was another genocidal massacre--800,000 ethnic Tsutis,

massacred by neighbors over a short period of time, after hate radio riled the Hutu majority up against them.

[Warren DeMontague]

16. Yeah, I was going to mention Rwanda as well.

[ProudLib72]

17. Thank you

I was trying to remember that name: Tsutis. And I think your previous post makes a valid point in connection with Rwanda. Africa is not part of western culture. Their wars are dismissed as "tribal conflict".

[NickB79]

18. My best friend's parents escaped from there

They had a successful restaurant when the Communists took power. They were thrown into the rice fields and lost everything. They had to watch their oldest son slowly die of disease and malnutrition. After fleeing through the forest, they eventually crossed the border and were welcomed to the US by a foster family. Today, they are looking to retire, having built a new life and successful business here.