Our trip was bookended by reminders of two of the world's most infamous periods of genocide. In Amsterdam we visited the Anne Frank Museum, and in Rwanda we spent hours in the Kigali Memorial Centre.
September 14, 2013…going home
A different experience than we thought we'd have, but a typical trip for us with many observations, questions, some answers and a great deal left to reflect on. Starting with our first day in Amsterdam--a visit to the Anne Frank house. Outside the door of the Frank residence stand two children, a boy and a younger girl. They might have just knocked. They might be waiting for the door to open so they could ask if their friend Anna could come out to play, to wander along the canal and search out other friends. We know something these kinder may not. Their joyful days of play and careless laughter--sometimes at the expense of a friend, are numbered. As they play, a monster is growing just across the border. He will develop his theories of "us and them" at first quietly, then in writing, and finally with maniacal screaming in ever larger public venues. His words will swiftly take root in the psyches of his audience, there to do their intended work of kindling distrust, suspicion, and hatred strong enough to kill.
Hitler's words will separate Ann's friends and her family's acquaintances into "us"--Juden, or "them"--the Aryan chosen, and this from a mongrel with neither blue eyes nor blond hair. To be sure there will be those whose courage and sense of decency will cause them to stand, defend, shelter, hide, care for the "other," never enough to turn the tide of hatred, but enough to show what is possible.
For now, we capture the image of the children at the door of 263 Prinzingracht. On this September afternoon in 2013, what we know and what they too surely know is that the Frank family is gone from this place. Only Otto, Anne's father, survived Hitler's holocaust. He came back to Amsterdam to learn that his entire family was gone. Eventually, he found a publisher for Anne's diary, and converted his now defunct factory/hiding place into a memorial and testimony for the ages. When will we ever learn? The answer must still be blowin' in the wind.
The story has been repeated the world over many, too many, times. Now, on the last day of our trip, we stand outside the Genocide Memorial in Kigali, Rwanda. There are many gardens here honoring and commemorating Rwandan women, children, culture, division, unity, and reconciliation. Among the gardens there is a simple, raised concrete slab. Under the slab lies the remains of 250,000 Tutsis and Hutus alike, killed in the genocide of 1994--Rwandans all. Another mass grave in a far corner, has a glass cover. Gray silk banners with white crosses have been draped across the coffins and remains below. New bodies are found every day and they are brought here to lie with their fellow Rwandans. In the gardens there are elephant statues reminding us to Zahore! Remember. Near the fountain of coming together there is a statue of a primate with a cellphone. He is asking us to tell the stories we learn here in hopes that the world will remember and that we will listen to the wind and find an answer.
When our neighbors are called vermin, scourge, leeches, inyenzi--cockroaches, inferior, lower than, "those people," niggers, spics, dagos, frogs, white trash--When they look like us, speak our language; when they laugh and cry with us, share a meal, marry our daughter, how then can we turn our back as they are rounded up, ghettoized, singled out by people we don't even know? How do some of us find the courage to give our friends food, find them shelter, lead them away from harm? How did a group of young school girls in Rwanda find the courage to defy the genocidaires who burst into their school? "OK, Hutu to this side, Tutsi cockroaches over there." No one moved. "Now! Or you will all die." No one moved. The entire class died together.
We learned of the Hutu house worker in a Tutsi home who stood helping her employer when the men with pangas came through the kitchen door, "Stand aside. Let us have the Tutsi inyenzi." "No, I will not." The women died together. And the men and women of the world's undergrounds in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the United States, Britain, China, Vietnam, Cambodia--what of them all--named or unknown--who put their lives in jeopardy for others while their neighbors chanted: "Heil," "Nigger," "Faggot," "Inyenzi," and the gray ashes from the worl'd's incinerators drifted slowly down upon their shoulders like so much dandruff? Sociologists can name the ways in which genocide is perpetrated. They can describe those who resist, and those who comply, but simply--neighbor to neighbor, in my family, among my friends, I want to know the answer. Would I have the courage to give my life. I cannot be sure. The answer is still blowin' in the wind. Hear the voices...
"If you knew me, and if you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me." Felicien Ntagengwa
Pictures for this blog entry: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtnpostpics/sets/
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