Escape Camp 14
Custodio Groves
Amherst College has a wide array of facilities that can accommodate the needs of even the most physically active individual or group. Alumni Gym is the main hub for campus recreation and houses 2 basketball areas, a golf room, squash courts, an indoor tennis/track facility, a pool, and the Wolff Fitness Center. The Wolff Fitness Center includes an 8,000 square foot two-level, fully air-conditioned facility, complete with a full range of cardiovascular, BodyMaster selectorized machines, and free weight equipment.
Great Escape offers more for your pre-teen to participate in! Tuesday through Thursday, Great Escape campers will travel to a variety of nearby trip locations. On Mondays and Fridays, campers will remain at the Great Ventures campsite and participate in camp activities. Note: The 1st and 6th week of camp there will not be any trips. Campers will remain at Camp Great Ventures for traditional activities.
Until his early 20s, the only life Shin Dong-hyuk had ever known was one of constant beatings, near starvation and snitching on others to survive. Born into one of the worst of North Korea's system of prison camps, Shin was doomed to a life of hard labor and an early death. Notions of love and family were meaningless: He saw his mother as a competitor for food.
When he was 23, Shin managed to elude the guards and crawl through an electrified fence over the dead body of his friend to escape. He found his way to China, then to South Korea and eventually to the U.S. He is the only prisoner born and raised in one of North Korea's prison camps who is known to have escaped.
Reporter Blaine Harden has written an account of Shin's journey called Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West. Harden talks to All Things Considered's Melissa Block about the deeply disturbing realities that Shin lived through.
"His body is, in many ways, a road map to his life. He was tortured over a coal fire, and there are some very serious burn marks all across his lower back and buttocks. When he was in a sewing machine factory shortly before he escaped, he accidentally dropped a sewing machine, which was very valuable. One of the guards took a knife and cut off part of [Shin's] finger as punishment. When [Shin] escaped, he crawled over the body of his friend, who was electrocuted on the fence on the way out of the camp, and his friend was a sort of insulator to the voltage from the fence. But just as Shin was about to get through, as he wiggled through ... his lower legs hit the wires, and it burned his legs on the shins from knee to ankle very badly. The scars are quite severe."
"He had heard his brother and his mother talk about a planned escape. His training was such that when he heard the word escape, he became completely alarmed; his heart started to pound; he felt that if his family was involved in an escape in any way, that he would be either beaten, tortured or killed. So immediately, when he heard this, he turned them in. He was then arrested the next day and tortured for seven months in an underground prison."
"He was brought to the front of the crowd, sat down, and his mother and brother were hauled out. And his mother was hanged, and his brother was shot in front of him. And what he told me, and what he has said many, many times, is that he refused to catch his mother's eye when she was hanged, and he was glad that she was dead, because she had threatened his survival in the camp. Now, that was when he was a child, and he hates to talk about this. He has now been out of North Korea for about seven years, and he now starts to feel guilty. But at the time, that was not part of the way he saw the world, and part of the agony of being free for him, is to have this sort of ex post facto understanding of what it means to be a human being, and to try to relate that to what he once was."
"I talked to five people who've been in the camps; they said that no one could tell the story he has told unless they've been in the camps. And then there is almost an industry of human-rights investigators who have spoken at length to everyone willing to talk who has been in the camps. They believe Shin. They find his story consistent."
"He had been involved, he said, in beating up crippled people himself in the camps. I asked him about Shin, and he said there were a lot of people in the camps who had it tougher than Shin. Shin had it relatively easy. That's why he was strong, and that's why he had the capacity to get out."
"There are more than 23,000 North Koreans living in Seoul who've recently fled the country. There are at least 26 individuals who've been in the camps who've told their stories in incredible detail to journalists and human-rights investigators. It's not a mystery; it's not a secret. In some ways, we haven't been paying attention. And what Shin's hope is, and what my hope is, is that his story will be the trick that will make people understand what's been going on there for half a century, and what continues to go on."
"It's maddening. There seems to be a calculated policy to keep human rights off the international diplomatic agenda. One way they do this is by making the Korean peninsula a permanent flash point for very serious security issues. And because of the seriousness of those existential threats, human rights is often relegated to, you know, a tertiary issue. In any diplomatic forum, if ... the existence of the camps is brought up, according to American diplomats, the North Koreans go nuts and leave the room. I guess that's the explanation."
At 4, he witnessed his first execution. At 6, he watched a classmate beaten to death for having five grains of corn in her pocket. At 14, he survived heinous torture, then witnessed his mother being hung and his brother shot. At 22, he lost a finger as punishment for dropping a sewing machine.
At 23, on January 2, 2005, Shin climbed over the electrified corpse of his fellow escapee, and began a labyrinthine journey toward freedom. His own slight body bears innumerable scars of mutilation. When he escaped, he knew virtually nothing of the outside world, yet he miraculously traversed North Korea, China, South Korea, and finally made his way to the United States.
Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations.
Welcome to Lake George Escape, voted Best of Lake George for 7 years running. The premier family camping resort and destination in the beautiful Adirondack region of upstate New York!
If your child loves to play, learn, make new friends, and do something exciting each week, they belong at our camps! All children deserve a great summer and ERfC Summer Escape Day Camp is the perfect summer destination! ERfC summer camp offer children a safe, exciting and memorable day camp experience. Summer Escape is open to all children from Enfield and surrounding towns.
ERfC Summer Escape Camp is loaded with exciting activities and adventures! Children have the opportunity to build self-confidence, independence and creativity, participate in sports activities and educational enrichment activities while parents have peace of mind knowing your children are in a safe and enriching place. Activities will be based around the weekly camp themes and may include field trips and on-site guests. Each day will include a breakfast snack, afternoon snack and lunch. Weekly showcases will be back this year to show our families what we worked on all week!
Summer Escape is a seven-week day camp located in Enfield. Camp is open daily from end of June through August (closed July 4), Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Extended day hours are available beginning at 7:00 AM to the start of camp and the end of camp until 6:00 PM.
Curtain Call: Campers can show off their talents! Together, each team will learn a performance that will be included in the Family Showcase. The performance may be a dance, song, skit, or special skills!
Campers arrive for Olympics on Sunday, July 14 between 3:00-5:00 PM. The closing ceremony is at 3:00 PM on Friday, July 19 with pick-up beginning 30 minutes prior. Guardians and loved ones are encouraged to attend the closing ceremony.
Campers arrive for Camp Create on Sunday between 3:00-5:00 PM. The closing ceremony is at 3:00 PM on Friday, with pick-up beginning 30 minutes prior. Guardians and loved ones are encouraged to attend the closing ceremony.
Campers arrive for Adventure Camp on Sunday, July 7 between 3:00-5:00 PM. The closing ceremony is at 3:00 PM on Friday , July 12 with pick-up beginning 30 minutes prior. Guardians and loved ones are encouraged to attend the closing ceremony.
During the first week, Interns assess their leadership skills and explore different leadership roles at camp. They develop tools for contributing to a safe and fun enviornment for campers and learn to lead some classic Gilmont activities.
Interns arrive on Sunday, June 30 between 3:00-5:00 PM. The closing ceremony is at 3:00 PM on Friday, July 12 with pick-up beginning 30 minutes prior. Guardians and loved ones are encouraged to attend the closing ceremony.
At the beginning of the week, CYA campers work together to create their own camp schedule. They still participate in Morning Celebration, Bible Studies, and evening Vespers services and select their favorite traditional camp activities to enjoy as a group. The goal of this session is for High Schoolers to practice ownership of their schedule and camp engagement and to leave camp with a new sense of empowerment and connection.
Campers arrive for Forces of Nature on Sunday, June 23 between 3:00-5:00 PM. The closing ceremony is at 3:00 PM on Friday, June 28 with pick-up beginning 30 minutes prior. Guardians and loved ones are encouraged to attend the closing ceremony.
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