Dith Pran, of "Killing Fields," Dies at 64

[Elphaba]

'Killing Fields' Survivor Dith Pran Dies - AOL News

NEW YORK (March 30) - Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country's murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film "The Killing Fields," died Sunday, colleague Sydney Schanberg said.
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Dith was working as an interpreter and assistant for Schanberg in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, when the Vietnam War reached its chaotic end in April 1975 and both countries were taken over by Communist forces.

Schanberg helped Dith's family get out but was forced to leave his friend behind after the capital fell; they were not reunited until Dith escaped four and a half 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.


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I actually met Dith in 1996. I had a very good friend who was the weekend photography editor of The Times, where Dith worked, and he and Dith were very tight. At first I didn’t know how to act, because, despite Robert’s reassurance Dith was very easy-going and funny, all I could think of was him being the actual character in the horror of “The Killing Fields.”

In between snorts and chortles and guffaws, where I could not catch my breath because I was laughing so hard, I still had some trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that Dith Pran was having dinner with me!

Just as my friend had said, Dith was hilarious, full of jokes and happiness and smiles. Robert said he was always that way, as he was so grateful to be an American, to have a wonderful life as a photographer, and to have survived the horrors he had, but with a Buddhist’s peace.

I have had experiences that, when I think back on them, I am still amazed at how everything came together to make it a “magical moment” I will never forget. That night with Dith Pran was definitely one of them. He was a lovely man, and I am a bit sad today.

Elphaba