6 | SEPTEMBER 19 • 2019 

I

t sits atop a hill overlooking 
the bustling city of Kigali, 
the capital of the country. 
As you drive up, the first thing 
you see is a large, dramatic arch-
way entrance with the words 
“Kigali Genocide Memorial” and 
Rwandan soldiers 
standing on each 
side. There are 
Kleenex boxes in 
the lobby, and the 
ticket lady tells 
us to take some 
because we’
re 
going to need it. 
We strap on the 
provided headphones and begin 
walking. 
The somber tour takes us 
through winding, darkened 
hallways. On each side, we pass 
graphic photos, videos and arti-
facts that detail the massive tribal 
genocide that happened here in 
April 1994 when more than 1 
million out of 7 million people 
were murdered over the course 
of 100 days. Another 200,000 
Rwandans were displaced and 
hundreds of thousands of chil-
dren were orphaned. 
The displays hold nothing 
back and include such things as 
the actual machetes used by the 
murderers, shoes of the victims 
and, in one haunting room, 
we see hundreds of human 
bones and skulls, many bearing 
large, open fractures from those 
machetes. 
There’
s a separate children’
s 
section, similar to Yad Vashem. 
The walls are filled with lots 
of photographs of once-happy 
children. The section is called 
“Tomorrow Lost.” As you enter, 
you see the words: “In memory 
of our beautiful and beloved 
children who should’
ve been our 
future.” 
In one of the film rooms 
we see a survivor explaining 
that the memorial is the place 
“where Rwandans can visit their 
relatives.” One film features a 
bride and groom who were both 

orphaned by the genocide. The 
groom tearfully says celebrations 
are especially tough because 
“there’
s no adult family left.” 
The memorial is not just a 
museum, but also a cemetery. 
Outside are mass graves, huge 
slabs of concrete that entomb 
about 250,000 of the dead. 
Flowers are strewn along the 
graves, left by loved ones. Next 
to the graves looms a huge 
wall, resembling the Viet Nam 
Memorial, filled with countless 
names of the dead. Everyone 
walking by is silent, shocked, 
numb, heartbroken. Some people 
need that Kleenex. 
One display details how 
the Rwandan authorities from 
the Hutu tribe set about to 
dehumanize and ethnically 
cleanse members of the T
utsi 
tribe. We see the “Hutu 10 
Commandments,” which includ-
ed such things as “no T
utsi wives, 
business partners or secretaries 
permitted,” “no more education 
for T
utsis,” and “you cannot loan 
them money.” The final cruel 
inscription: “Do not take pity on 
them. They are cockroaches.”
Upon reading that, my mind 
went straight to the Nuremberg 
Laws in the 1930s, in which 
Germany proclaimed that Jews 
would not be permitted to do 
most anything, including going 
to German schools, marrying 
non-Jews, entering theaters, parks 

and skating rinks or even driving 
nearby. 
As a Jew, it’
s impossible to tour 
the memorial in Rwanda and not 
think of the Holocaust. 
One section actually tells the 
story of the Holocaust in two 
rooms, along with the stories of 
the genocides in Cambodia, the 
Balkans, Namibia and Armenia. 
(I couldn’
t turn my head away 
from watching a group of 
Africans in the museum closely 
studying the story and the photo-
graphs of the Holocaust.)
This place, aside from teach-
ing about the horror of 1994 
in Rwanda, is also a powerful 
reminder that full-scale genocides 
have happened and continue to 
happen. They are not isolated 
events and not necessarily past 
tense. No particular ethnic group, 
neither Jews nor others, has a 
monopoly on its suffering. 
Its victims are vast, crossing 
over centuries of human history 
and spanning the entire plane.
This is one of those places you 
visit and then can never forget, 
just like Yad Vashem. Actually, it 
was inspired by two people who 
visited Yad Vashem and decided 
that Rwanda needed a tangible 
place where its people could go 
and collectively grieve. The peo-
ple here say that facing the ugliest 
chapter of their past is the best 
way for them to heal and to teach 
future generations. 

The nation is now run by a 
popular president who once led 
the T
utsi rebels. Paul Kagame has 
preached forgiveness and soli-
darity. 
It’
s somewhat of a miracle 
that today Rwanda is bustling 
and widely accepted as one of the 
true jewels in Africa, earning it 
the moniker “the Switzerland of 
Africa.” 
The country’
s rebirth is a 
bright and positive sign of hope, 
yet it cannot erase the horror 
that unfolded here in 1994. 
The Kigali Genocide Memorial 
preserves that horror in graphic 
detail, just as Yad Vashem cap-
tures the Holocaust. 
The Rwandan genocide is 
another monumental tragedy for 
humanity. It’
s not bigger, smaller, 
worse or any less painful than 
any other genocide in history. 
Genocide is genocide. They can’
t 
and shouldn’
t be ranked. Each 
one is equally catastrophic, vile 
and incomprehensible. And 
each one, sadly, is an inescapable 
reminder that from time to time, 
despite all our progress, humans 
are capable of completely losing 
their humanity. 

Mark Jacobs is the AIPAC Michigan 
chair for African American Outreach, 
a co-director of the Coalition for Black 
and Jewish Unity, a board member 
of the Jewish Community Relations 
Council-AJC and the director of 
Jewish Family Service’
s Legal Referral 
Committee.

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Mark Jacobs

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MARK JACOBS

essay
Rwanda’s Yad Vashem

LEFT TO RIGHT: The front archway entrance at Kigali Genocide Memorial; The site of the mass graves; The wall of names.

