Deborah A. Batiste dbatiste@adl.

org November 19, 2011

What do you know about the Rwandan genocide?

How do you know what you know?

Background and context:

www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/etc/cronflash.html

Immacule was born in 1972 in the western Rwandan province of Kibuye, in the village of Mataba, the only girl in a family of 4 children. Her family was devout Roman Catholic; both her parents teachers.

Immacule studied Electronic and Mechanical Engineering at the National University of Rwanda.
During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Immacule and seven other women hid for 91 days in the small bathroom of a local pastors home while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them.

While in hiding, Immacule taught herself English using a Bible and an English-language dictionary.
Immacule came out of hiding to find that her family, except for one brother, was brutally murdered during the 3-month genocide that claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Her knowledge of English helped her secure a job with the United Nations following the genocide. Today, Immacule is a wife and mother, author, public speaker on peace and reconciliation, and runs a charitable fund for Rwandan orphans.

This book is not intended to be a history of Rwanda or of the genocide; rather, it is my own history. A number of very good, informative books have been published recently exploring in detail the politics and mechanics of the 1994 genocide in which, according to Rwandan government estimates, more than one million people were murdered in roughly 100 days. This is my story, told as I remember itand I remember it is as though it happened yesterday. Its a true story; I use my own name and the names of my family. However, I have changed most of the names of others who appear in the book to protect the identity of the survivors and to avoid perpetuating the cycle of hatred. I believe that our lives are interconnected, that were meant to learn from one anothers experiences. I wrote this book hoping that others may benefit from my story. Immacule Ilibagiza, Preface, Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, 2006, p. xvii

What does the author say she is doing and NOT doing by writing this book?
What do readers learn from the preface that prepares them for the text? What are some possible ways that others might benefit from this or other memoirs?

Pre-genocide: In my village, young children walked eight miles to and from school along lonely stretches of road, but parents never worried about a child being abducted or harmed in any wayI was an extremely happy little girl in a happy family, living in what I thought was a happy village where people respected and cared for one another. (3)

Everyone was welcome in our home, regardless of race, religion, or tribe. To my parents being Hutu or Tutsi had nothing to do with the kind of person you were. If you were of good character and a kind human being, they greeted you with open arms. (15)

Pre-genocide, continued:

We (Hutu and Tutsis) had virtually the same culture. We sang the same songs, farmed the same land, attended the same churches, and worshiped the same God. We lived in the same villages, on the same streets, and often in the same houses. (17) Through a childs eyes (or at least through my eyes), we all seemed to be getting along. I couldnt begin to count the number of times my Hutu friend Janet and I ate dinner at each others houses. As a young girl, the only time I was reminded that there were different tribes in Rwanda was when I stood up in class once a week during ethnic roll call. It was an annoyance, but it didnt bother me too much because I had yet to discover the meaning of discrimination. (17)

During the genocide:

It was my turn to stretch when a commotion erupted outside. There were dozens, maybe hundreds, of voices, some yelling, others chanting. We knew immediately that the killers had arrived.
Let us hunt them in the forests, lakes, and hills; let us find them in the church; let us wipe them from the face of the earth!

They whooped and hollered. They jumped about, waving spears, machetes, and knives in the air. They chanted a chilling song of genocide while doing a dance of death: Kill them, kill them, kill them all; kill them big and kill them small! Kill the old and kill the younga baby snake is still a snake, kill it, too, let none escape! Kill them, kill them, kill them all!
It wasnt the soldiers who were chanting, nor was it the trained militiamen who had been tormenting us for days. No, these were my neighbors, people Id grown up and gone to school withsome had even been to our house for dinner. I recognized dozens of Matabas most prominent citizens in the mob, all of whom were in a killing frenzy, ranting and screaming for Tutsi blood. The killers leading the group pushed their way into the pastors house, and suddenly the chanting was coming from all directions. Find them, find them, kill them all. My head was spinning; I fell backward on the ladies. I couldnt breathe. Dear God, save us I whispered, but couldnt remember the words to any of my prayers. A wave of despair washed over me, and I was overwhelmed by fear. (77-78)

What position does Immacule want her readers to occupy in the reading of the text? What techniques does she use to place readers in this position? What questions would you ask students to process after reading this text? What strategies would you use to harness the emotional intensity of passages such as this?

I stared at the coffins of my mother and Damascene and thought of my father and Vianney, whose bodies I would never recover Where shall we put them? Where shall we bury them? Uncle Paul asked, sobbing as he ran his hands along the crude pine caskets. Home, I said. Well take them home and lay them to rest. We carried the bodies of my mother and brother into the ruins of our home and dug a large grave in the center of one of the rooms where laughter and love had once echoed. There were no priests left in the village, so we performed the burial rites ourselves. We sang some of my mothers favorite hymns and prayed many prayers. I asked God to hold my family close to Him and watch over their beautiful souls in heavenand then I said good-bye. (199)

I watched through Semanas office window as he crossed a courtyard to the prison cell and then returned, shoving a disheveled, limping old man in front of him. I jumped up with a start as they approached, recognizing the man instantly. His name was Felicien, and he was a successful Hutu businessman whose children Id played with in primary school. Hed been a tall, handsome man who always wore expensive suits and had impeccable manners. I shivered, remembering that it had been his voice Id heard calling out my name when the killers searched for me at the pastors.

Stand up, killer! Semana shouted. Stand up and explain to this girl why her family is dead. Explain to her why you murdered her mother and butchered her brother. Get up, I said! Get up and tell her!
His dirty clothing hung from his emaciated frame in tatters. His skin was sallow, bruised, and broken; and his eyes were filmed and crusted. His once handsome face was hidden beneath a filthy, matted beard; and his bare feet were covered in open, running sores. (203-204)

David Patterson writes there is a multilayered issue of recovery and the effort to return to life through an act of testimony. Some survivors try to recover a sense of humanity; others try to recover a relation to the divinity. All struggle to recover a sense of meaning and value. And all are moved by a sense of urgency that would stir the world from the sleep of indifference. *
How

does Immacules text provide both historical and cultural context for the Rwandan genocide?
How

does her text speak to the universality of pain, loss, and acceptance across cultural groups?
In

what ways does a text like Left to Tell shape our collective truth and understanding of an event?
How

does intersecting history and personal interpretation of history by those who have experienced it help make such events part of the human story?
*David Patterson, Night in the Contexts of Holocaust Memoirs. Approaches to Teaching Wiesels Night. Ed. Alan Rosen. New York: MLA, 2007, p. 89.

What do you know about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II?
How do you know what you know?

Background and context: www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/japanese_internment/internme nt_menu.cfm

Lawson Fusao Inada was born in Fresno, CA, in 1938, a third-generation Japanese American. His father was a dentist and his mother a teacher; his maternal grandparents founded the Fresno Fish Market in 1912. In 1942, shortly after the United States entered WWII, Inada and his parents and grandparents were sent to internment campsfirst to the Fresno County Fairgrounds Assembly Center; then to a camp in Jerome, Arkansas, in the Mississippi Delta; and, finally, to Amache Camp in the Colorado desert. After the war, the family returned to Fresno, where their home and business had been looked after by German and Italian friends. Inada attended school in the city's multi-ethnic West Side neighborhood and took writing classes from poet Philip Levine at Fresno State University. He loved jazz music and had ambitions as a jazz string bass player but decided instead to attend the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he met his wife Janet with whom he had two sons. Inada's Before the War: Poems as They Happened (1971) was the first volume of poetry by an Asian American published by a major publishing house.

Additional books of poetry include: Legends from Camp (1993); In This Great Land of Freedom (1993); and Drawing the Line (1997).

When asked why he writes poetry about his experience in the internment camps, Inada explains, Theres a remoteness to history, and to simply know the facts is not always satisfactory. Theres more to life than that. So you might say Ive taken matters into my own handstaken the camp experience in my hands, stood in the sun, and held it up to the light. www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=1910

How does Inadas poetry hold the internment of Japanese Americans up the light?

How does Inadas poetry told through the lens of resistance and agency provide students an opportunity to learn from the past while developing skills and knowledge to shape the present?
How can literature help shape (or re-shape) our understanding of resistance, so that we do not see those who are oppressed as passive victims but rather as agents who express their moral, political, and human indignation through various forms of oppositional behavior?

What do you know about the Holocaust?

How do you know what you know?

Background and context: www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005143 www.echoesandreflections.org

Shortly after World War II, philosopher Theodor Adorno asserted that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. What is your reaction to this sentiment? What role has poetry (and Holocaust literature in general) played in helping us search for adequate language to make meaning of the Holocaust, or as Phyllis Lassner suggests, search for an adequate language of response?* How might poetry written after the Holocaust be read and interpreted differently from poetry written during the Holocaust? Should one perspective be assigned greater authority and truth?

*Phyllis Lassner, Negotiating the Distance: Collaborative Learning and Teaching Night. Approaches to Teaching Wiesels Night. Ed. Alan Rosen. New York: MLA, 2007, p. 116.

The cartwheels rush, quivering. What is their burden? Shoes, shivering.

The cart is like a great hall; the shoes crushed together as though at a ball. A wedding? A party? Have I gone blind? Who have these shoes left behind? The heels clatter with a fearsome din, transported from Vilna to Berlin.

I should be still, my tongue is like meat, but the truth, shoes where are your feet? The feet from these boots with buttons outside or these, with no body or these, with no bride? Where is the child who fit in these? Is the maiden barefoot who bought these? Slippers and pumps, look, there are my mothers: her Sabbath pair, in with the others. The heels clatter with a fearsome din, transported from Vilna to Berlin.

Once more he sees his companions faces Livid in the first faint light, Grey with cement dust, Nebulous in the mist, Tinged with death in their uneasy sleep. At night, under the heavy burden Of their dreams, their jaws move, Chewing a nonexistent turnip. Stand back, leave me alone, submerged people, Go away, I havent dispossessed anyone, Havent usurped anyones bread. No one died in my place. No one. Go back into your mist. Its not my fault if I live and breathe. Eat, drink, sleep and put on clothes.

What poetic devices does Avraham Sutzkever use in his poem? How do these choices influence our reading of the text? Do you think Sutzkever actually witnessed this scene while in the Vilna ghetto? Does it matter to you if he did? Many museums include a collection of shoes; what effect does such a memorial have on you? What would you identify as the poets goal in writing this poem? Does the fact that The Survivor was written in 1984 influence how you read and interpret it? If so, how are you influenced? Who do you think he is in this poem? Did your thinking about who he is change from the beginning to the end of the poem? Why? What do you need or want to know about Primo Levi? Why? How might knowing more about him influence your understanding of the poem itself? Would it give the poem [more] legitimacy if you knew he was a Holocaust survivor? Most textbooks include very little on the topic of survivors. Why do you think this topic is rarely included in texts? How does poetry, memoir, and other forms of literature, as well as visual history testimony, fill this gap?

I have told you this story not to weaken you But to strengthen you. Now it is up to you. Survivor of Sachsenhausen