Dith Pran
Dith Pran (born September 27, 1942) is a photojournalist best know as a refugee and Cambodian Holocaust survivor and was the subject of the Academy Award winning film, The Killing Fields. (He was portrayed in the movie by first time actor Haing S. Ngor.)In 1975, Pran and New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg stayed behind in Cambodia to cover the fall of the capital Phnom Penh to the communist Khmer Rouge forces. Schanberg and other foreign reporters were allowed to leave, but Pran was not permitted to leave the country. When Cambodians were forced to work in forced labor camps, Pran had to endure four years of starvation and torture, before finally escaping to Thailand.
He has been a photojournalist with the New York Times in the United States since 1980. Pran has worked for recognition of the Cambodian Holocaust victims. He received an Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 1998 and is founder and president of The Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, Inc.
