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Genealogy Book Store > Genealogy books beginning with W
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We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda |
Author: Philip Gourevitch
Published: 1999-09-01 |
List price: $15.00
Our price: $10.20
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Never Again - Again and Again
Perhaps it should surprise me less that locales once mauled by basest violence are often grotesquely tranquil: the soothing splash of waves at the D-Day beaches of Normandy; silently drifting snow flakes settling in a white shroud over Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka; flowers, flags and cold observant granite bearing testimony to the names of the desaparecidos in Santiago, Chile; the reflective silence of visitors at Tuol Seng, Cambodia; the solitary sentinel of stone remembering slain students in Tlatelolco, Mexico City.
Presumably these modern monuments are crafted to inspire peace - perhaps a peace which makes mild recompense for the violence which preceded it. Yet in my own heart of hearts, I half expect to hear - part of me wants to hear - some remnant of the outcry, some level of unwavering protest to what never should have happened. The silence makes for too comfortable a memory. Part of me feels the need to be shaken as others were shaken, if I am to be moved toward anything more enduring than recollection.
I felt this same uneasy peace while reading _We Wish_ in Kigali, Rwanda, during some of the most Bohemian, cool-breezed, and sun-bathed days I have experienced in Africa. Yet Gourevitch shattered my exterior world with a gut wrenching, mind bending account of how a once-unified nation, ostensibly infused with Christian morals, turned upon itself with brutal, unforgiving, calculated callousness. I needed to hear this outcry, for it was not to be found in the blissful highland weather of Kigali.
The outcry comes from the opening pages - from a church in Nyarubuye, where countless skeletal corpses remain strewn on the grounds, just as they were massacred in 1994. Gourevitch opens appropriately with the scene, ostensibly to impress upon the reader that Nyarubuye was the rule, not the exception. Cope with Nyarubuye and you can, perhaps, begin to estimate the internal fortitude needed to grasp the broader tragedy in the following pages.
Despite being deeply troubled by the facts he uncovers, Gourevitch adopts a somewhat dispassionate stance in his reporting. Without the tones of haughtiness or sarcasm which often characterize works of a sociopolitical postmortem, he adopts a role more aptly described as an Unblinking Chronicler of the Intrinsically Absurd. This is not to say that Gourevitch neglects critical commentary or analysis; rather, he recognizes that facts alone sometimes yield the strongest possible critique. After all, this is the story of a genocidal fugitive living undisturbed in a Texas border town; of priests and pastors complicit in the murders of their congregants; of farcical "race science" and the failures of colonialism; of family members who kill in-laws; of United Nations soldiers forbidden to fight; of humanitarian organizations assisting murderers; of unsung heroism; of multinational apathy.
It is difficult to read this book and fail to be bewildered, to not have some sense of outrage at a glaring, global dereliction of duty. Through the words of Roméo Dallaire, Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission In Rwanda (UNAMIR), the reader is introduced to a UN system which seems to have forgotten that genocide and gross human rights violations rest at the core of its genesis. In Dallaire, the reader finds every evidence of a man imbued with honor and a humble but determined allegiance to duty, despite a paucity of resources, which can be ascribed to nothing other than the noblest form of bravery. Yet his intentions to take preemptive action against one of the greatest evils of this generation are rebuffed by UN officials in New York who are better suited to learn from Dallaire than to instruct him.
Halfway through the book, I visited Kigali's genocide museum. My most vivid memory has little to do with the museum itself but of the weeping I heard as visitors viewed a room full of photos of the deceased. I could not help but think of a previous journey I had made: a snowy trek to the ruins of Treblinka in Poland. It had bothered me that the granite sign which read "Never Again - Plus Jamais - Nie wieder" was caked with snow and illegible. I traced out the words again with my finger, removing the snow . . . as the flakes continued to drift down. I left a stone on the top of the sign and trudged onward.
The more places I visit, the less I believe "never again" . . . the more I am convinced that the human condition is in desperate need of a kind of redemption only God can offer. But that discussion is beyond the scope of a book review. But suffice it to say that Gourevitch tacitly raises the question. If education isn't the answer (Nazi Germany was highly educated); if religion isn't the answer (Rwandans were highly churched); if military might isn't the answer (France, Belgium, the United States, and the United Nations all failed) . . . then what is?
 "The Idea is the Crime"
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
A Preventable Tragedy
"
Philip Gourevich's award-winning retrospective of the Rwanda Genocide in 1994 takes a rational look at the unfathomable and irrational. Gourevich spent many months in the war-ravaged country and talked with dozens of survivors. The facts aren't in dispute...over 800,000 Tutsis were hacked to death by machete-wielding Hutus...but the causes are. Among his conclusions: the "ancient animosity" between Hutus and Tutsi's is largely a creation of the West; the colonial powers Germany and Belgium inflamed ethnic divisions where they did exist; and the Church (Protestant and Catholic) remained silent as the killing continued.
There is enough blame to go around in the story: the International Relief Community, the UN, the media and the major powers. International tribunals have found fault with everyone. Gourevich takes some time exploring the whole concept of genocide:
"Nobody knows how many people were killed at Nyarubuye. Some say a thousand, and some say many more: fifteen hundred, two thousand, three thousand. Big difference. But body counts aren't the point in a genocide, a crime for which, at the time of my first visit to Rwanda, nobody on earth had ever been brought to trial, much less convicted. What distinguishes genocide from murder, and even from acts of political murder that claim as many lives, is the intent. The crime is wanting to make a people extinct.
The idea is the crime."
As a double-dose of genocide studies, I am also currently reading "Pol Pot:Anatomy of a Nightmare."
Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare
One of the best books I have read in a long time
Philip Gourevitch, in We Wish to Inform You, has accomplished an incredible feat: a moral and reasoned history of an insane situation. He manages to cut through all of the misinformation that we so often hear about the Rwandan Genocide and write something truly informative.
Other reviews on Amazon have complained about his focus on the political/violent situation in the entire region, but I strongly disagree. How are we to understand the genocide without its context and without the context that it created in nearby countries? I also found myself very interested in Rwanda's (and the region's) possibilities for a decent future.
This book is also damning towards the "international community," as well as international journalism of our times. The "international community" failed to intervene in the genocide - indeed, France even armed the genocidaires - and even fed and housed the genocidaires after they fled Rwanda. And Western Journalists consistently wrote the type of stories that were no more informative than "people are killing each other." Well, in this book, Philip Gourevitch has completely negated any previous excuse about the complexity of the situation or how little information was available, because he managed to quite clearly get to the heart of the situation and explain it quite easily, but in all its complexity, to us non-experts and non-historians.
The best, most educational and most gripping account of the genocide
I've lived in Africa near Rwanda for several years and have studied the Rwanda genocide extensively in graduate school. There is no better book about the genocide than "We Wish to Inform You.." It's extremely sad, frustrating, and fascinating at the same time. Gourevitch tells the stories so well that this doesn't read like non-fiction. My favorite part about this work is how he goes into detail about the refugee situation after the genocide, a time not as well documented as the actual genocide. It was fascinating how the international aid machine facilitated more murders by the interahamwe. The story he unravels is engaging and suspenseful and you can't wait to turn the page to find out what nugget of knowledge he turns up next. Pitching curveball after curveball, you are bound to learn a lot about many issues surrounding the genocide by reading this book.
 Average, loses momentum
I purchased and read this book last year, as I have studied the subject on this one quite extensively.
This book gets off to a good start, but loses interest as the book progresses.
There is also a lack of real-life survivors and witnesses imput, which could have made it more interesting.
The book however shed light onto many of the problems and atrocities that occurred after the genocide - which I wasn't particularly savy about previously - most notablly the problems in the Congo as a result of Genocidaires fleeing and relocating there - and still not losing their blood-lust and total disrespect for life.
Still a good addition to your home library however.
Derek Meade, NSW, Australia
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