Fascinated

I am disturbingly fascinated by atrocities like the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. Fascinated because of the horrors that went on for so long, and the brutality that innocent people faced because of ethnicity and politics. Fascinated because the world sat around and did nothing.

It's hard to believe, sitting on my comfortable couch in the study lounge of Jones, that something as catastrophic as the Rwandan genocide could happen in my lifetime. Reading books such as "We Wish to Inform You..." and "Left to Tell" provide mere glimpses into the horrors that people faced, the scarring images that will forever haunt them. I complain about so many unnecessary inconveniences in my life, when some survivors of the genocide lost their entire families. And not only lost them, but have to have recurring nightmares of them being slaughtered and hacked to death. Of their bodies being tossed into a heap of nameless, faceless corpses that disappear forever. Even thinking about something like that happening to my siblings is inconceivable. I will never understand how we can live in a world where monsters can kill children, mothers, and fathers so mercilessly and live with themselves. Or how survivors of this disaster have the courage to move on with their lives.

This fascinates me, in a terrifying and shuddering way, that some people had to go through hell and now live with that nightmare, while I can sit here in Jones and probably, hopefully, not ever have to witness a massacre of my loved ones.

This link is about the importance of remembering Rwanda. The pictures, although disturbing, need to be engraved in our minds so we can prevent something like this from ever happening ever again.

http://www.visiontv.ca/old/RememberRwanda/main_pf.htm