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the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Please join the Ridgewood Public Library for a conversation with the Cambodian musician, human rights activist, and a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime. Chorn-Pond, subject of the National Book Award-nominated Never Fall Down, is an advocate for the healing and transformative power of the arts. Book signing & Q&A to follow. 6:30 pm: reception. 7 pm: program.
September 18,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Free screening of Angelina Jolie’s movie, First They Killed My Father, tomorrow at George Washington Middle School – Monday, September 18th at 7 pm in GW Library – brought to you by the Ridgewood Cambodia Project – concession snacks and Cambodian items for sale to benefit RCP – please join us! Film is appropriate for ages 14 and over.
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers is a 2000 non-fiction book written by Loung Ung, a Cambodian author and survivor of the Pol Pot regime. It is a personal account of her experiences during the Khmer Rouge years.
Until the age of five, Loung Ung lived in Phnom Penh, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official. She was a precocious child who loved the open city markets, fried crickets, chicken fights, and sassing her parents. While her beautiful mother worried that Loung was a troublemaker—that she stomped around like a thirsty cow—her beloved father knew Loung was a clever girl.
When Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975, Ung’s family fled their home and moved from village to village to hide their identity, their education, their former life of privilege. Eventually, the family dispersed in order to survive. Loung trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, while other siblings were sent to labor camps. As the Vietnamese penetrated Cambodia, destroying the Khmer Rouge, Loung and her surviving siblings were slowly reunited
The Ridgewood blog highly recommends this movie for all you “would-be commies” and any of you “hate America first types” the totally brutality of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge (utopian communism) will cure you of any of those maladies .
decades ago damage from Communist murderer Pol Pot still effects Cambodia today
Ridgewood club seeks to improve lives of children in Cambodia
APRIL 7, 2014 LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, APRIL 7, 2014, 12:04 AM
BY BY LAURA HERZOG
STAFF WRITER
If the world were black and white, Cambodia might almost seem like two different places.
One, which suffered a genocide not too long ago – when nearly two million people, more than 20 percent of the population, were lost; the result of a communist regime’s extreme ideology targeting intellectuals and professionals, among others.
And another country filled with people known for their warmth and positivity.
Yet it’s all Cambodia. And, as unlikely as a connection between Ridgewood and this country may seem to a village outsider, it’s a place that has become near-and-dear to the hearts of several students from Ridgewood. The students have been engaging in an ongoing district-wide effort, started in 2007, to help Cambodia move forward. Ridgewood children have even made annual visits to the country, including a visit this past February.
Initiated by Ridgewood parents and later also led by educators and students, the effort is also raising global awareness and cross-cultural appreciation in an affluent school district.
“It’s so nice to give back – for us living this luxury lifestyle in Ridgewood, especially,” said George Washington Middle School (GW) eighth grader Ireland Horan. “Because honestly, even if you don’t need help, you’re going to need it some day.”
Horan, who has seen videos of Cambodia, but has not yet visited, noted that the Cambodian people she has seen “have nothing” and yet “they couldn’t be happier.”
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/community-news/clubs-and-service-organizations/ridgewood-club-seeks-to-improve-lives-of-children-in-cambodia-1.843402#sthash.MxqWMe2e.dpuf
