Woman says it’s too important to forget horrors
July 19, 2010
VENICE BUHAIN; Staff writer
The Olympian
LACEY - For Lacey resident Rokaih Vansot, who fled at age 4 with her family from the killing fields of Cambodia, the history of what happened to her relatives under the Khmer Rouge is too important to forget.
But those memories are painful for both her mother, who lost 33 members of her family to the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979, and for her father, who lost 39 members of his family to that regime. Those numbers do not include extended family members, she said.
“For my family, it is still very fresh – all the violence and the punishments,” said Vansot, a human resources consultant with the state Department of Transportation. Vansot spoke to a group organized at Pleasant Glade Elementary School by the Olympia Jewish-Muslim Listening Group, an organization formed to encourage conversation and understanding after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
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