Day of Rembrance

April 6, 1994. The presidents of Burundi and Rwanda, Cyprien Ntaryamira and Juvenal Habyarimana, were killed when a rocket downed their plane as it landed in Kigali. Their death was set up by Habyarimana’s own extremist cabinet, as a trigger for their “final solution” to rid Rwanda of the Tutsi. Today marks the 11^th anniversary of the dawn of open Genocide in Rwanda. That day, the state-owned radio stations in Rwanda, that had for years broadcast hate-filled propaganda against the Tutsi minority, gave the signal: “Cut Down the Trees!” This reference to the stereotypically tall and lean Tutsi physique incited the fastest genocide in modern history. After just 100 days, more than 800,000 people died at the hand of their neighbors. That is five times the pace that Hitler killed his enemies in concentration camps during WWII. The Hutu civilian militias went about their gruesome work with little more than machetes. The term used for killing a Tutsi was “chopped.” In order to escape from being “chopped,” Tutsi families fled their homes, only to find all roads blocked, with patrols of machete-wielding vigilantes waiting to terrorize them. They raped their wives and daughters; they chopped off the limbs of their children, and made the men commit unspeakable offenses against members of their family, only to execute them anyway. The bloodletting that began in Rwanda that day continued unabated, and without international intervention, until there were few targets left to kill. While the international community debated the semantics of genocide versus “acts of genocide,” whole villages were hewn down – the bodies of their inhabitants dumped into the rivers and left in the streets as an omen to any Tutsi who dared return. One young girl lay for several days under the corpse of her mother, motionless for fear that the killers would notice her. She went out at night to find food, and returned to her horrific hiding place until she was discovered by a representative of the Red Cross. She was 7 years old.

Today, I visited the United States Holocaust Museum with my younger brother, Carl, who was visiting from Spokane, Washington. I felt that attending the museum would be a fitting way to pay my personal tribute to those who died in Nazi Germany, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the Hutu Rwanda, and now in Darfur, Sudan. I experienced several impressions as I worked through the ever-difficult material in the memorial.

First, I re-experienced a feeling I had when I watched “Hotel Rwanda.” The majority of my time studying the Rwandan Genocide occurred prior to having my own children. Throughout Hotel Rwanda, the children were in acute danger. Orphanages were attacked, and the Genocidiers stopped at nothing to rid the land of “Tutsi Cockroaches” – regardless of their age.

In the Holocaust Museum, there is a clay model of Crematorium II, a gas chamber in Nazi Germany. The figures of women, stripped of their clothing and their dignity, clung to their infant children, or gently held the hands of their toddlers as they waited for their “Hygienic Showers.” Little did they understand that they would in just a few minutes enter a chamber where they would die by asphyxiation. In the depiction of the gas chamber, on the bottom of the writhing pile of people struggling for air, lies a naked woman, futilely trying to protect her infant daughter from the trampling feet of the others. Like her, I could never allow my children to die at the hands of others – and would fight to the bitter end to protect them. The doors to the gas chambers were designed to include a small glass peephole so German Soldiers could observe the deaths – and ensure that they had killed them all prior to opening the doors.

Parents in Rwanda sent their children to the local churches, hoping that the killers would at least fear God – for they feared no man – to seek refuge. In one particularly harrowing tale, the Genocidiers surrounded the Nyarubuye church, and massacred every last woman and child cowering inside. The Church, with its victims rotting on the floor, was left in its horrific state after the genocide ended. It stands today as a memorial to the victims.

Second, I decided that there was something different about “The Holocaust” that was missing from other genocides. The deliberate nature of the Nazis struck me. They photographed their acts; they documented who they killed; and they spent great sums of money constructing the concentration camps, the incinerators, and other means of killing the Jews. Even the forced labor camps of Pol Pot did not approach the level of pre-meditation, planning, and cold calculation that Hitler and his men employed in their efforts. I was overwhelmed by the detailed infrastructure erected for the sole purpose of exterminating a large group of other human beings. Trains, buildings, clothing, tools, gas, weapons, dogs – all organized with the “Final Solution” in mind. There is something evil about that – something that is not present when people kill in chaos – even chaos that took advanced planning.

In Rwanda, many local people participated in the killings. They report that it was mindless – almost like being intoxicated. The pace was so fast, and the villages were simply chaotic –folks got caught up in the energy of it all. This fact is one of the greatest challenges today: tribunals must sort the planners from the participants in accountability systems such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), or the local village trials called gacacas. There are still 100,000 suspects in jail facing trial in the ICTR, some 6,500 have already been tried; and 20,000 more have been released for trial by gacaca. In the face of so much pain, and terror, what is the meaning of justice? What can a justice system do to mend such a wound?

Therefore, I gained a new reverence for the lives lost to the Holocaust. I have a deeper anguish for the hole in history where charity and humanity should have been. I acknowledge the responsibility that inheres in each individual to never again allow such a thing to occur.

While I understand the incredible danger and complication inherent in humanitarian intervention, there must be a point at which human suffering prompts our response. After the Holocaust, we signed a document called the Genocide Convention. In it, the nations of the world agreed to confront genocide with force, and that they would never permit it to happen again. But, the document does not call us to action – the suffering does.

So, my questions to you: Do we have a moral obligation to stop genocide? Does the U.S. Government have a moral obligation to stop it? Is it worth fighting to stop? What do we owe the victims when we fail to intervene? Anything? Does a nation’s responsibility for genocide depend on the nationality of those killed? Or, does the fact that such killings are “crimes against all humanity” put us all (individually, and collectively) on the hook? What, beyond our willingness to tell ourselves that it is a far-off, foreign land, explains our indifference? Isn’t the nature of genocide inherently in our interest to stop? If you don’t think so, can you articulate your answer without reference to national political interests? I ask this because I am not sure it matters what political interests are in play when such massive slaughter takes place.