For three decades, French journalist and writer Jean Hatzfeld has been looking for answers to the horrors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Through countless interviews with survivors in the Nyamata region, he has written a series of powerful books on the questions the genocide left behind.
In a revealing new interview with Jeune Afrique (read the full interview here), Hatzfeld reflects on his journey to penetrate the silence surrounding the genocide and understand how ordinary people could turn into brutal killers of their own neighbors and families. He describes the immense challenges of getting survivors like Sylvie Umubyeyi, Jeannette, and others to open up about their unimaginable trauma.
”Survivors grappled with shame, guilt over lost faith, spotty memories, and above all, an inability to forgive perpetrators unwilling to disclose the full truth of what happened.” Unlike the current regime in Rwanda, Hatzfeld realized early on that the genocide story could not be fully told without capturing the voices of those who endured its atrocities firsthand.
While interviewing jailed perpetrators provided some insight into the mechanics of the killings, Hatzfeld sees the survivors’ accounts as more essential, if also more psychologically fraught.
As he states: “Today, the survivors are not making it. The day after a war, we can leave again, we have lost a dad, a grandparent, a leg, but we can get through it. They can’t get out of it. They still have a metaphysical fear of eradication. We wanted to eliminate them from the earth, God abandoned them. Their best friends could turn into monsters. We don’t have an answer.”
That survivors can’t find closure is part of why the genocide still haunts us, with no satisfying explanation. “If every week you have a new book on the Shoah in the bookstore, it’s not for nothing, it’s because we still don’t have the answers,” Hatzfeld says.
After 30 years, Hatzfeld knows the questions will never end. Each return visit yields new revelations as memories shift and survivors work through complex layers of trauma. His books are essential reading on one community’s struggle with events that, as Hatzfeld says, leave us with no answer to “how people could become bloodthirsty in this way.”
For those seeking to understand the lingering wounds of the genocide against the Tutsi, Jean Hatzfeld’s interview and books are a must-read. Find the full Jeune Afrique interview here.
By Albert Gasake, March 19, 2024.
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