Customer Reviews

Prisoner of the Word: A Memoir of the Vietnamese Reeducation Camps

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This book details the five-year ordeal of a former South Vietnamese officer through many reeducation camps in South Vietnam after the fall of Saigon.

It includes mind numbing details of beatings, starvation, hard work in the fields and pure harassment by the guards. The most interesting part is the description of how expertly the communists manipulated the prisoners' minds. The latter were tricked into believing they would be released earlier if they worked harder. And the "two week-reeducation" became a five year ordeal.

Those who would like to understand how the communist system works should read this book. The author is to be congratulated for bringing to us a detailed description of the communists' reeducation camps.

To this Reviewer this book is an exhaustive detailed diary about being a Communist captive for 5 years. He was an ARVN Lt training in an Armor School in Long Thanh near Saigon. Story starts during the Fall of Saigon, April 27, 1975.

The book has 33 chapters covering a specific time, usually a month to a season. Much of it is the personal story, which is repetitious and usually concludes with one-liner "moral" at the end of each chapter.

This reads similar to and is mixture of Mao's Cultural Revolution, Red Guard, Great Leap Forward tactics and Soviet prison labor. Normal punishment and reward systems to get productive labor and prevent escape. Spread rumors to inspire hope for an illusion of quicker release.

There is no systematic examination in Vietnamese Communist re-education compared to other VN prison camps or for that matter to Chinese, Soviet and American systems.

Prisoner Of The Word: A Memoir Of The Vietnamese Reeducation Camps is the chilling but accurate memoir of author Le Huu Tri's years as a prisoner of Vietnamese so-called "reeducation" camps, which were actually forced labor camps in which starvation, nonexistent medical care, and execution were all too common. Yet perhaps the most insidious facet of these camps was the authorities' ruthless control of information, rumors, and lies, which were manipulated to control not only the prisoners, but the general populace. Prisoner Of The Word not only describes a part of Vietnam's modern history; it is a cautionary tale of the dangers of "spin control" in any and every government of the world. Highly recommended reading.

This book details the five-year ordeal of a former South Vietnamese officer through many reeducation camps in South Vietnam after the fall of Saigon.

It includes mind numbing details of beatings, starvation, hard work in the fields and pure harassment by the guards. The most interesting part is the description of how expertly the communists manipulated the prisoners' minds. The latter were tricked into believing they would be released earlier if they worked harder. And the "two week-reeducation" became a five year ordeal.

Those who would like to understand how the communist system works should read this book. The author is to be congratulated for bringing to us a detailed description of the communists' reeducation camps.