Support and Understanding Rwandan Genocide and Holocaust Survivors
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n 2005, Yad Vashem played an important role in helping victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide begin to come to terms with what happened to them in their own country, 65 years after the Holocaust. Together with a French foundation and a foundation created by Rwandan genocide survivor Yolande Mukagasana, 51, who in the three months of violence lost her children, her husband, her parents and four of her five siblings, sponsored an eight-day seminar for 28 Rwandan survivors and professionals and Holocaust survivors to talk about genocide education and remembrance. In a very emotional
meeting between the two groups, the Holocaust survivors proved to be a source of support and understanding the Rwandan victims had not been able to find elsewhere. Wondering if she was in trauma or not in trauma, Hilarie Mukamuzimpaka, 37, confessed that she still liked to sing as she did with her family when she was a child although her husband and five siblings had been murdered. Holocaust survivor Genia Witman answered her: “I don’t know if you are normal. 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 explained. Rutazibwa Privat, 40, whose older sister and most of his extended family were killed,
saw the importance of amassing archival material. Yad Vashem’s large collection of artwork left behind by the Nazi victims specifically impressed him. In a way, he said, the material gives sense to the suffering. “We need to express ourselves, collect material of the genocide in our own history,” said Privat. If the world had learned from the Holocaust, he added, the Rwandan genocide would not have occurred. 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. “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.” A retired university art historian with four children and nine grandchildren, Lev 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 noted that 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. 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.” — J. Sudilovsky
SUMMER 2013
Na’amat Woman
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