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YADVASHEM-RWANDA Nov-8-2005 (980 words) With photos. xxxi
At Yad Vashem, survivors of two genocides meet, compare stories
By Judith Sudilovsky
Catholic News Service
JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Yolande Mukagasana came to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial to honor the memory of her three murdered children.
Mukagasana, 51, is a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In three months of violence, she lost her children, her husband, her parents and four of her five siblings.
Her husband was killed by a neighbor at the outset of the slaughter, and her teenage children were tortured so they would tell about her hiding place, but they died without revealing where she was, she said. She said she barely escaped being raped and killed.
In early November Mukagasana, who now lives in Belgium, brought her memories, her fears and her desire to memorialize her children to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.
"I wanted to do something for my children's memory, but also for all the children of Rwanda who were killed and raped," said Mukagasana, who was raised Catholic. "When I saw the memorial here, I felt like my children were calling to me."
The foundation Mukagasana started to keep the memory of the genocide alive worked with Yad Vashem and a French foundation to sponsor an eight-day seminar for 28 Rwandan survivors and professionals as well as Holocaust survivors and Yad Vashem educators to talk about education and remembrance.
"This was a special group who suffered their own trauma," said Avner Shalev, director of Yad Vashem. "They came to learn from our experiences dealing with the Holocaust ... but we were also strengthened by listening to them."
During the encounter, the two groups of survivors shared their stories and experiences.
"I ask myself if I am in trauma or not in trauma. I ask you if I am normal or not normal," said Hilarie Mukamuzimpaka, 37, whose husband was killed in the genocide a year after they were married. She also lost five siblings, but said she still enjoyed singing as they did growing up.
"I don't know if you are normal," said Genia Witman, a Holocaust survivor. "I just know that I would very much like to sing with you. Maybe someone else can tell us if we are normal."
Mukamuzimpaka said she felt the Holocaust survivors were like family.
"They were willing to listen to us," she said.
Rwanda does not have a tradition of written histories, but passes on stories orally, said Rutazibwa Privat, 40, whose parents survived a 1959 Hutu-led massacre against Tutsis. Privat fled Rwanda, but his older sister and most of his extended family members were killed in the 1994 genocide.
Privat said he was impressed by the material amassed at Yad Vashem, specifically the art work left behind by Nazi victims. In a certain way the material gives sense to the suffering, he said.
"We need to express ourselves, collect material of the genocide in our own history to change a trend," said Privat, who left the priesthood and now runs a center for research and documentation.
He said if the world had learned from the Holocaust the Rwandan genocide would not have occurred.
"What we learned is that you can't expect to be helped in the time of need," he said. "Never, never put your life in the hands of others. We don't trust the international community, somehow, like Israel."
He said that foreign Catholic missionaries -- both German and Belgian -- had a big hand in spreading the idea of differences between the Hutu and the Tutsi peoples that led to the genocide, in which at least 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered by Hutu extremists. Before the arrival of the missionaries, said Privat, the two peoples had a 400-year history of living as one nation.
As for his own faith, he said: "Maybe the Catholic Church was useful, and maybe still is useful, to people as a transmitter of a certain message, but it has been very much compromised in many historical and human tragedies, especially in our country. ... I no longer consider it as the place where my hope, my faith is. As a tool it has been useful ... for certain values I learned. But now I am mature and need to make my own way. ... I have had enough of it."
Ehud Lev, 71, who lost his whole family in the Holocaust, said the only difference between the two groups was that the Holocaust survivors were 65 years removed from their tragedy, while the Rwandan survivors were just beginning to face their ordeal. He noted that he was saved by Catholic families.
"What surprised me so deeply is that what (the Rwandans) told is so similar to what we experienced," he said. "Suffering is suffering, an orphan is an orphan; it makes no difference who or where.
"We didn't know what to tell them," he said. "I can tell you that we understood them and identified with them. If we understand the other, then maybe that won't happen (again.)
"I don't believe in the U.N. or public opinion or journalism. I believe in proper education toward tolerance and morality," he added.
Lev, a retired university art historian with four children and nine grandchildren, said he hoped that he and his fellow survivors had been able to demonstrate to the Rwandan survivors that there is life after this tragedy.
But Mukagasana said although she felt connected to the elderly survivors she was unable to feel hopeful about her future.
"When I speak to the Holocaust survivors it is like I am speaking to the survivors of Rwanda, but I am afraid, because they did not give me much hope. It seems the wound keeps opening up over the years," she said.
"I thought when I was 80 it wouldn't be with me and I won't be crying. I thought I would be able to live, but apparently that does not happen," said Mukagasana.
END
Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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