“It may seem strange to you here, especially the many of you who lost members of your family, but all over the world there were people like me sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror.” – Bill Clinton’s apology to the people of Rwanda, 1998, Kigali, Rwanda

Change the time and place and most of our recent presidents could have said something like this. Certainly Roosevelt might have talked about pre-war Germany in the same way, though it would have been difficult to plead ignorance about the extermination of Jews in Europe after 1941. Jimmy Carter turned away from the turmoil in Southeast Asia and the 1.5 million deaths in Cambodia took place mostly on his watch. Rwanda was just one place in one time, but war, which is said to be the near-permanent condition of mankind, is usually accompanied both before and after by the incessant murdering of the weak by the strong. No matter how civilized, righteous or superior we make ourselves feel, these ongoing slaughters tell us we are little different from the generations who came before us.

The film “Hotel Rwanda” speaks to this.

“Hotel Rwanda” tells us this through the story of one man’s courage at a time when a million people are being murdered around him. It also tells us about the world’s inability to act in the face of this evil. Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager in Rwanda, found himself at the center of this storm and had the rare combination of courage, intelligence and resourcefulness to  to help others live. Most importantly though, he understood what was right and what was wrong and unlike so many others who also could have also done something, acted on that understanding.

There are no Jews in “Hotel Rwanda” nor are there any Germans. There are no Cambodians or Khmer Rouge. No Muslim militias or helpless blacks of Darfur. None of these people were in Hotel Rwanda, but they were all there. No one says “holocaust” or “pogrom” in Rwanda and the word-play today is “genocide,” but when the strong slaughter the weak, it is a pogrom, a holocaust or whatever, and it can happen in Asia, Europe or Africa or in this century or another.

We are more aware of the world’s killing grounds today because fewer corners of the earth are in complete darkness. We see into most places at least after the fact if not during and it is probable too, that the maniacal killing of one people or group by another may always have been more commonplace than we realize.
 

In Rwanda, in 1994, one tribe killed a million of another tribe in a matter of weeks. Before strong central governments emerged in places like Africa, these killings were smaller and widely dispersed. The lesson is clear: if the strong can harness the power of their government in the service of evil, they can and do devour their weak.

Paul Rusesabagina’s courage and sacrifice stood out in Rwanda making hime the Raoul Wallenberg of this tragedy. Like Oskar Schindler, Rusesabagina risked much to save a few. For every Rusesabagina or Schindler or Wallenberg, though, there are many more Eichmanns, Mengeles, Pol Pots, Stalins, Hitlers, and Saddams.

One more point. “Hotel Rwanda” goes against that which we’ve all been conditioned to believe. We are told incessantly , especially by the ‘peace activists’ in our midst,  that there can only be war and peace and that war is the greatest evil there is. Our society has come to believe that, but maybe that’s not the way it really is. Films like “Schindler’s List,” “The Killing Fields” and “Hotel Rwanda” touch us and makes us uncomfortable with that notion because they awaken the possibility that there could be worse.

“Hotel Rwanda” is now in theatres around the state, including Hartford, Madison, Orange, Stamford, Norwalk and Trumbull.

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