The Unsung Hiders

Anne Frank was famous for hiding through the Holocaust.  Countless Jews were saved by kind friends and strangers who risked everything to hide them.

During the Rwandan Genocide, Immaculee Ilibagiza hid in a bathroom for 3 months with seven other Tutsi women.  Eugenie Mukeshimana survived by hiding with many strangers who took her in.  Numerous refugees found shelter in mosques with Muslims who fed and protected them. 

To the many persons who risked their lives to hide those in danger, thank you.

CBS story on Pastor Simeon Nzabahimana who hid Ilibagiza

CNN story on Immaculee Ilibagiza

Muslims who sheltered refugees

Paul Rusesabagina, Hotel Manager

Paul Rusesabagina was the general manager of the luxury hotel Mille Collines in Kigali at the inception of the Rwandan Genocide.  His story, about how he turned the hotel into a refugee camp saving over 1,200 lives, has been dramatized in the Hollywood film, Hotel Rwanda.  He received the Wallenberg Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The story goes deeper though.  Rusesabagina has accused current Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, then leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), of participating in the genocide as well, killing Hutus ("Double Genocide Theory").  Not only that, he is trying to tell people the conflict is still going on, with Rwanda (under Kagame) exploiting "conflict minerals" in eastern D.R. Congo and fueling a war that is still costing millions of lives. 

“What you may not know,” he says in a video on his foundation’s website, “is that the ethnic conflict which led to this genocide has still not been resolved. The ethnic conflict has spread to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where more than 5 million people have died. The exploitation of the Congo’s ‘conflict minerals’ by Rwanda is fueling this horrible war. Poverty, inequality, discrimination and political repression are on the rise in Rwanda. We have a moral responsibility to change this.”  (Source)

In other words, the genocide never truly ended.  It took a break and got turned into a "war" which people can go on ignoring, costing 5 million additional lives.  Rusesabagina's continuing heroism is speaking this truth to expose the sham despite the risk to his life.

Wikipedia

National Geographic article

CNN article

Washington Post article, "Smearing a Hero" by Hotel Rwanda director Terry George

Mbaye Diagne, UN Observer

Mbaye Diagne was a Senegalese UN military observer under Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire's command.  Upon hearing of the Prime Minister's assassination on April 7th, 1994, he went to the PM's house and found her four children still alive.  Despite UN regulations against interference, he saved the four children and dozens (perhaps hundreds) others by ferrying them hidden in his vehicle to relative safety and using favors and UN credentials to pass through checkpoints during the next 2 months.  He was killed by shrapnel from mortar fire at a checkpoint on May 31st, 1994.

But when the genocide started, I saw him still rushing around but I didn't know what he was doing. I subsequently learned that he'd rescued the family of the prime minister, the children, and he'd hidden them in his house. I understand that he saved quite a lot of other people as well by driving through the front line, hiding people in his car, driving back through the front line and so on. … You could see he was never hanging around the car park like some of the some of the UN officers. He was always going out and doing things.  (Source.)

Wikipedia

PBS:  Ghosts of Rwanda, Memories of Capt. Mbaye Diagne

Carl Wilkens, Adventist Relief Worker

Carl Wilkens was in Rwanda with his family (wife and three children) when the genocide started.  When the foreigners evacuated, Wilkens was the only American who chose to stay behind after evacuating his family.  He is credited with saving the lives of more than 400 persons at 2 orphanages and a church.   Wilkens explains:

"You know, right there in front of me was our house girl who's a Tutsi. Worked for us for several years. I knew as soon as we left she would be slaughtered. There was a young man who was our night watchman. A Tutsi. He'd be slaughtered. And there was no way convoys were letting anyone take Rwandans with them. And at the time my family was evacuating, we lived on a dirt road, and I watched my family drive away down the road. I walked back up to the gate. Closed it and locked it, but as I went back up there and knelt down on the floor with our house-girl and night watchman, and we prayed for the safety of my family, it was a pretty empty feeling."  (Source.)

Wikipedia

PBS:  Interview with Carl Wilkens for "Ghosts of Rwanda"

American Radio Works

Carl Wilkens Official Site

Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire and company, UN peacekeepers

Canadian Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire was Force Commander of the UN Peacekeeping mission in Rwanda in 1994.  When the genocide commenced, he was ordered to evacuate with the rest of the Peacekeeping force.  He convinced the UN command to let him stay.  Using the UN compound as a refuge, he and his men saved over 30,000 lives by protecting refugees in UN-controlled areas.  Without food or infrastructure to house as many as 20,000 people at once, the conditions at the compound were deplorable.  Dallaire and his men subsisted themselves on expired canned food.  Yet he was unable to convince anyone to send significant supplies or food, let alone soldiers to stop the killing.  And try he did.  He had a BBC reporter broadcasting live killings, yet the governments of the world chose to ignore the lives lost.

To this day, Lt. Gen. Dallaire suffers from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) with the helpless memories of death and torture.  Unlike all the foreign nationals who were evacuated within days of the genocide, he and many others chose to stay and save lives, even if they were not able to stop the killing. 

If you have never read the book, Shake Hands with the Devil, or seen the HBO documentary (free on Google video) and movie by the same name, I would highly recommend any or all of them.

Wikipedia
Amnesty Intl article

The Rwandan Genocide (4/94 - 7/94)

This week we'll look at people who tried to save lives during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, in which at least 800,000 lives were massacred in about three months.  They probably don't think of themselves as heroes; people who see such atrocities rarely do.  They are often haunted afterwards by all the lives they didn't save.  But for those whose lives are owed to them, they are heroes.

Vilmos Farkas, Ransom Deliverer

In 1998, a Serbian elderly couple was kidnapped, tortured, and held for ransom by Croatian nationalists.  The couple's children could not enter Bosnia Herzegovina, so they asked a distant Hungarian friend, Vilmos Farkas, to help.  Farkas drove through Hungary, then walked over 100 kms through Bosnia Herzegovina while hiding from Croatians and bandits.  He delivered the ransom and accompanied the couple back to safety, at tremendous risk to himself.  Farkos never got public recognition or compensation.

Here is the original story.