If the Talmudic precept “whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the whole world” is to be believed, Bernard Krisher saved the world many times during his 87 years, which ended March 5 in Tokyo.
Krisher’s own life began in Germany in 1931, the son of Jewish shop owners who would flee the Nazis through the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Portugal, arriving in the United States in 1941 on a ship aptly called Serpa Pinto, the “ship of destiny.”
Krisher would form ties to another country ravaged by war and genocide, Cambodia, working to bring it back from the brink of catastrophe. His influence in Cambodia, establishing schools and hospitals and a newspaper, played a pivotal role in repairing damage caused by decades of violence and upheaval.
His best-known achievement in Cambodia was to set up the Cambodia Daily newspaper in 1993. At the time, press freedom was at great risk and of great importance. It was only two years after the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement ended two decades of civil war and a genocide. Up to a fourth of the country’s population had been murdered or starved to death. The Cambodia Daily’s obituary of Krisher explains that he started the paper because he believed “a democracy needed a free press and told his staff that a paper should be like a gadfly to keep a check on those in power.” The paper’s motto was “All the news without fear or favor,” and it operated with that mentality until its forced closure.
That staff included Cambodian and foreign journalists. Many of the foreigners would go on to be outspoken defenders of the publication in major papers elsewhere around the world when, in the fall of 2017, Prime Minister Hun Sen, an autocrat originally put in place by Vietnam, persecuted the paper because it would not bend its knee to the regime. The government claimed the Cambodia Daily owed about $6.3 million in taxes. Advertisers withdrew their business and the paper was forced to shut down its print operations. The government’s assault was part of a larger attack on press freedom. U.S.-backed radio stations and news services were also shuttered. The last issue of the paper did not go to press quietly. Its front page headline proclaimed Cambodia’s “Descent Into Outright Dictatorship” above a picture of the arrest of opposition leader Kem Sokha.
Krisher’s impact went far beyond the Cambodia Daily. Despite not being personally wealthy, he founded nonprofit organizations that built schools and a hospital, the crown jewel of which was Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. It was built in the mid-1990s and it continues to provide free medical care to the poor and operates a telemedicine program in remote villages. Krisher’s work resulted in the construction and operation of more than 560 state schools across every province of the country. The Cambodia Daily explained how he did it: “Krisher leveraged his rolodex and chutzpah to solicit funds from private donors, and the World and Asian Development banks. Known by many around him as Bernie ‘Pusher,’ he once said, ‘I remain very New York — quite aggressive, confrontational against authority and establishment.’”
Krisher moved from New York to Japan in 1962, joining Newsweek as a reporter in the magazine’s Tokyo bureau, where he met his wife of almost six decades, Akiko. He was promoted to bureau chief in 1967 and remained in that position until 1980. After Newsweek, Krisher opened the Tokyo bureau for Fortune magazine and stayed in that position until 1984 while simultaneously working on other local journalism projects. Among his best-known articles was an exclusive print interview with Emperor Hirohito just before his historic visit to America in 1975. Krisher also secured the first interview by a Western journalist with Indonesian President Sukarno in 1964, and the first with South Korean dissident Kim Dae-jung after he became president in 1998.
Perhaps most remarkably, Krisher was able to rehabilitate his relationship completely with King Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who severed ties with the U.S. in 1965, partly over Washington’s refusal to apologize for an article Krisher wrote while at Newsweek. The rapprochement was so complete that Sihanouk helped Krisher with his humanitarian work, including donating land for the hospital in Phnom Penh.
Krisher’s ability to juggle hard-hitting journalism and fundraising while at the same time charming world leaders and royalty into granting interviews and donating to his philanthropic projects turned him into one of the most influential people in modern Cambodia’s history. This refugee from Nazi Germany lived a full life dedicated to making sure countless others could live.
Bethany Mandel is a part-time editor at Ricochet and a stay-at-home mother.
