Safe at Last: Refugees in America

These refugees, like the Holocaust victims, need to have their stories told to help in the healing process. The hope of the refugees whose stories are told here was that in America they would be free, have food to eat and their children could get an education and make something of themselves. These are stories of survival against great odds, of refugees from Cambodia, China, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Laos, Somalia and Vietnam.

Unfortunately, the personal on-going horror, with confusion, flashbacks and nightmares, of many of the refugees whose stories are told here, was to never end. This is in spite of being in the United States. This is because they brought their horrors, embedded deep into their unconscious minds, with them. It is sad to see these people in the best country in the world stumbling through their lives. Yet, as sad as these survivor stories are, they are the lucky ones compared to the hundreds of thousands who did not make it. That includes the half million (by some estimates) who drowned on the waters trying to escape from Vietnam in rickety boats, the two million who died in the Cambodian "Killing Fields," and the hundreds of thousands, or even millions, still lying in mass graves. And, the refugees in America all succeeded in perhaps the most important goal of all: Their children had a chance to succeed in America beyond their wildest dreams in their native countries.