CHICAGO (WLS) — Fifty years in the past, a tradition and its individuals had been almost misplaced to a genocide.
On Thursday evening, Chicago-area Cambodians gathered on town’s Far North Aspect for a day of remembrance and to mark a grim chapter within the nation’s historical past and honor the thousands and thousands of lives misplaced a long time in the past.
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It has been 50 years for the reason that fall of Phnom Penh to Khmer Rouge, successfully ending the Cambodian Civil Struggle.
The commemorative occasion happened on the Cambodian American Heritage Museum and Subject Memorial within the metropolis’s Ravenswood neighborhood.
It featured a candlelight ceremony the place survivors of the genocide lit seven candles, symbolizing the seven days of the week by which lives had been misplaced.
Attendees additionally acquired to listen to firsthand from these survivors, whom organizers say are solely capable of share their tales now, a long time after dwelling the trauma and fleeing their homeland.
The occasion not solely marked 5 a long time of survival, nevertheless it additionally hoped to protect the tales of a tradition and pave the way in which for therapeutic and hope for the long run.
“We by no means need this to occur once more,” mentioned Laura Ouk, President of the Nationwide Cambodian Heritage Museum. “The ‘by no means once more’ of wanting to have the ability to remind our youthful generations of the significance of teaching ourselves to know this has occurred up to now and simply with the ability to take a second to replicate on what has occurred and utilizing that historical past to maneuver us ahead.”
The Nationwide Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial is the one museum of its type within the nation devoted to Cambodian heritage and genocide consciousness.
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