Sophal Ear is a 26-year-old PhD student at Berkeley. He was too young to remember the Cambodian Holocaust - he left his homeland when he was still a toddler -- but it changed his life dramatically. Here is his story.

"My father died of malnutrition early on and that gave my mother motivation to try to get us out of Cambodia. One day, the Prime Minister of Vietnam called on all of its citizens to return home. My mother had learned Vietnamese by going to the markets. She decided to see if she could pass for Vietnamese. She gave us kids Vietnamese names and right before the interview, she learned that she'd accidentally given the boys girl's names and the girls boy's names. She corrected them at the last moment. She fooled everyone and we were allowed to go to Vietnam. From there, we managed to go to France and then the United States.

I went back to Cambodia in 1996. I remember getting into a cyclo and seeing that the driver was my age. There he was, pulling me, using all his strength. If it weren't for the grace of God, I would have been the one pulling him. What this all makes me feel is that some people haven't taken advantage of the opportunities of America. Some people destroy themselves while their counterparts in Cambodia are suffering. Who knows what they could have done if they'd had the chance to come here?

We can all learn from the lessons of history. It is better to learn so that we don't repeat it. What happened in Cambodia can still happen elsewhere. For four years, the Khmer Rouge was in power and no one did anything. It is up to us to fight the injustices in the world. If we see that something is not right, we should do something. If we sit idly by, we are as guilty as the perpetrator."