Escape from Totalitarianism
My book, Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia's Underground Railroad, has been out for just 10 days, but I'm already surprised by some of the feedback. I guess I should have anticipated it, but one of the themes I've observed can best be described as "solidarity."
A number of folks I've talked to take my story very personally. A New York Jew whose relatives fled the Nazis told me, "I get it." A radio host told his listeners that the stories in my book resonated with the story his father had told him about how he escaped from Communist Romania. Another radio host talked about his Cuban-American roots and compared his family's trials in Fidel-land with those of North Koreans trapped by the Kim family regime.
In my own family, I have a brother-in-law who, when he was 10 years old in 1956, walked across the Hungarian border to freedom in Austria. The family couldn't carry suitcases, which would have made it obvious that they were defecting, so he and his parents and older sister traveled in several layers of clothes.
Is there anyone out there in the Ricochet community who has a family story of escape from a dictatorship?
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Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
I don't have a personal story, but for anyone who hasn't read the book yet -- it's excellent. I'm one of those perverse few who finds North Korea fascinating -- I've been turned away from the border NK shares with China, and have been denied entrance a couple of times to view the Mass Games. The stories of escape and flight from NK are gripping and moving. Bravo on a great book, Melanie!
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
Thank you, Rob. I'm glad you like Escape from North Korea and appreciate your comments. I met lots of inspiring people in my research--both North Koreans who got out and the rescuers, often Christian, who helped them. Maybe it's just as well you didn't get to North Korea itself. I'm delaying my own trip till the country is finally free.
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
Itismostly Christians, isn't it, doing the work of helping North Koreans to freedom. That was the story I heard over and over in Jian, a Chinese border town on the Yalu River.
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
Yes, Christians -- locals plus Americans and South Koreans. But there are brokers who are in it for the money too. It's against Chinese law to help North Koreans, so doing so is now without risk. Several Americans have gone to jail for that "crime."
Sep '11
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
I guess there will always be courageous people who attempt to flee evil regimes and other courageous people who will try to help them.
Will there always be someplace for them to go?
May '10
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
By coincidence, I learned only today that my great aunt's big house in South Carolina was part of the Underground Railroad. There was an underground stream which allowed boat access between her basement and a nearby field.
Hopefully, someone is still alive who can tell me more about it.
Thanks for informing us.
Jul '10
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
Count Me as One of the few too.
Every time I step into a grocery store I think of North Koreans and appreciate the overwhelming selection I have before Me. It's the capitalistic miracle.
Heck, it takes Me hours to decided which ice cream is going Home with Me.
Apr '11
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
There are no escape stories from my family about Communist Romania, but I have heard several. The most dramatic one was from a couple I met here in the US, they now live in Ohio and escaped I think some time in the 60's. They where on a river cruise of the Danube. When they entered Austria the husband convinced his wife to join him in jumping off the boat and swimming to shore, with just the clothes on their back. They spent I think a year at something like a refugee camp and then found their way to America.
Most of the other people I know who left under communism (my family left after the Fall of Communism in 1991) did it by getting visas to visit Israel from where they were able to either get to America directly or by stopping in another country first.
Others, simply stayed abroad once they found themselves there. One gentleman I know in the 70's found himself in Rome on a student visa (or some such) he never left.
Apr '11
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
I must say though escaping from communist Romania though seems like a cake walk compared to getting out of the DPRK. By comparison Romania communism seems rather tame, all tough it was one of the most repressive regimes in the Easter block.
I have bought your book, by the way and am finding it disturbingly engrossing...
Apr '11
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
After 3 years, 8 months, and 20 days, my family managed to survive the hell that was the Khmer Rouge regime. We lost many immediate and distant relatives. One of my uncles was killed at the Tuol Sleng prison. I wouldn't be here today if my parents didn't survive the genocide.
Edited on September 29, 2012 at 9:53amMay '10
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
My parents had different experiences of dictatorship, living in Amsterdam through the Second World War. My father and his Jewish fiancée forged their records so she appeared married, without anyone checking her background and putting her at risk. He continued to use fake papers to help his wife's, other Jewish families hide in plain sight, and with a group they called "Illegalitiet", which means "Lawlessness", arranged to destroy many original local government records (birth certificates and so on) to prevent discovery of their forgeries. So if you want to trace your family history in Amsterdam, my father helped make it that much harder!
They were betrayed - she went straight to Auschwitz, he (being a political prisoner) went through prison in Holland, and various camps - including a forced labour camp where they made prisoners with a scientific background work on the ME262 until they realised the perverse incentive structure they had created, whereupon he ended up in Dachau. In my father's papers we found a heartbreaking "chit" from a US Army doctor entiteling my father to eat with US soldiers, since he had stayed on after the liberation to help treat the typhus epidemic in the camp...
May '10
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
...
He "liberated" a copy of "Mein Kampf" from the library, made all the more chilling by the "Konzentrationslager Dachau" stamp on the pages. We also have papers showing correspondence with a lawyer in Holland, and sending parcels of food and tobacco to him in the camp, so it is clear that while all prisoners were treated vilely, some were treated rather less vilely than others. Nonetheless, he always said that it was a jolly good thing that the liberating troops arrived when they did, and not a few days later.
Despite all that, he always compartmentalised his hatred of "Nazis", making a distinction between them and "Germans" that enabled him to continue loving the music and literature he admired.
My mother, 12 years younger, came to leave school, and wanted to read medicine. When she discovered that entering medical school required an oath of loyalty, she chose an alternative, going the the Conservatorium as a Violin student instead. She helped her family survive by cycling enormous distances to buy food directly from farms in the deep countryside. ...
May '10
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
...
After the peace she ended up helping my father trace his wife, the trail going cold at Auschwitz. That horrible exercise brought them together.
Sep '10
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
Aaron Miller: By coincidence, I learned only today that my great aunt's big house in South Carolina was part of the Underground Railroad. There was an underground stream which allowed boat access between her basement and a nearby field.
Hopefully, someone is still alive who can tell me more about it.
Thanks for informing us. · 15 hours ago
Wow. I would be incredibly proud if I found that to be the case in my family line (my people on both sides came to the U.S. after the Civil War).
Sep '10
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
I do the exact same thing, Jimmy! I don't associate it with another place, but just walking me makes me see how lucky I am/Americans are to be here.
Jimmy Carter
Count Me as One of the few too.
Every time I step into a grocery store I think of North Koreans and appreciate the overwhelming selection I have before Me. It's the capitalistic miracle.
Heck, it takes Me hours to decided which ice cream is going Home with Me. · 14 hours ago
Sep '10
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
I heard you (Melanie) being interviewed on NRO about your book, and it's been a very long time since I had such a sinking feeling for strangers. Any charities worth giving to in this regard?
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
Yes, Leslie, the North Koreans need our assistance -- Thanks so much for asking. At the back of my book is a page called "How to Help" with the names of several nonprofits and links to their Web sites. You can also find the same list, with links, on my Web site, www.MelanieKirkpatrick.com There's a tab there labeled "How to Help."
Sep '10
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
Thanks!
May '10
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
We ought to get people to donate all the catalogs and advertisements they normally throw in the garbage and drop them from a SR-71 Blackbird over countries like this.
Jul '10
Re: Escape from Totalitarianism
Along with articles claiming America's biggest problem, among the poor even, is obesity.