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Interview With a
Rwandan Genocide Survivor
Jacqueline Murekatete was 9 years old in April 1994, when the Rwandan genocide began. A Tutsi, she was the
sole survivor in her immediate family. Jacqueline now lives in New York City, where she works tirelessly to raise
awareness of genocide and to encourage young people to fight hate and racism. She shared her story with Upfront.
Murekatete speaks at the
U.N. on the 10th anniversary of
the Rwandan genocide
The Genocide Begins
hundreds of Tutsi—men, women, and children—had found
Jacqueline went to school in her maternal grandmother’s
refuge there. Within a few days our Hutu neighbors started
village, a few hours away from her parents’ village. When
coming in mobs with machetes, singing, “All Tutsis deserve
the genocide began on April 6, 1994, she had just returned
to die! All Tutsis are cockroaches!”
there after spring break.
This is the kind of hate speech and dehumanization that
was going on every day on the national radio. Every day,
When the killings began in my grandmother’s village, my
the Hutu-led government officials would come on the radio
grandmother and I and some of my other relatives decided
and they would say, “Tutsis are cockroaches!” and, “All
to run away to a county office. We thought maybe we’d
Hutus everywhere, you have to do your duty, and you have
find protection there, or people thought at least they could
to kill your Tutsi neighbors.”
defend themselves there. When we got to the county office,
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[So the mobs] would come, they would kill indiscriminately
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Eskinder Debebe/UN Photo
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For use with “From Rwanda to Harvard” on p. 14 of the magazine
Interview With a Rwandan Genocide Survivor (continued)
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men, women, and children, and then the [Tutsi] men would do
And initially, the orphanage was a haven for us from
their best to protect us. It became clear that we were not going
the killers. But as the genocide continued, the priests
to be protected there. We were going to die. So some people
began to be threatened. Hutu mobs would come inside the
started leaving the county office to find other places to hide.
orphanage, and they would tell them that they were going
to kill every Tutsi child. The priests would beg, they would
Hidden by a Hutu
bribe them. Initially, they would give money, and then later
One of Jacqueline’s uncles paid a Hutu man to hide her, her
on, once the money ran out, they started giving the killers
grandmother, and her cousin.
food—the food that they had originally used to feed us.
They started giving it to these people who were coming
The Hutu man hid us for about a week. One morning,
to take our lives, in order to hopefully save us for another
we heard loud banging on the door and Hutu screaming,
day, for another night.
“You have cockroaches inside your house! We’re gonna
find them, and we’re gonna kill them.” And within a
So it is in those circumstances that I and a number of
other children survived the genocide.
few minutes, we heard this group of men, armed with
machetes. And at that point, we thought, this is it, we’re
The Fate of Jacqueline’s Family
going to die. And whenever I speak about my experience,
The genocide lasted more than three months. During this
I always say I have no logical explanation as to how we
time, Jacqueline had no news of her family, but she prayed
survived that particular attack on our lives.
constantly that they were safe in hiding. When the
But for one reason or another, after a lot
of begging and pleading by the man who
was hiding us, the Hutus decided to leave.
But they told him, “You have to kick these
cockroaches out of your house. Otherwise
we’re going to come back, and next time we
won’t spare them.”
genocide ended, she was reunited with the
‘At that point,
we thought,
this is it, we’re
going to die.’
uncle who had saved her. He told her that
her parents, six brothers and sisters, both
grandmothers, and many aunts, uncles, and
cousins had been murdered.
The first time I learned about this, I refused
to believe it. For a long time, I used to say
Survival in an Orphanage
that it was a cruel joke. I used to go to bed praying that
Afraid for his life, the Hutu man told Jacqueline’s
the next morning when I woke up, somebody would tell
grandmother about an orphanage run by Italian priests
me the whole entire period had been a nightmare. But at
that was taking in Tutsi children. But Tutsi adults, whose
some point, we who had survived had to acknowledge that
presence increased the risk of attack by Hutus, could not
this was not a nightmare that we were ever going to wake
stay there. Jacqueline’s grandmother accepted the Hutu
up from. This was a reality that this government and our
man’s offer to take the children there. She promised she
own neighbors had taken part in—murdering [about] a
would come for them in a few days—but that was the last
million people. And not because of anything they had done,
time Jacqueline saw her grandmother.
but simply because of who they were, because of their
ethnicity, something that we did not have a choice in being.
At the orphanage, there were children whose arms had
been cut off, who were coming in bleeding from their
From Silence to Activism
legs and heads because they had been macheted. And
In 1995, at the age of 10, Jacqueline moved to the U.S. to
there were children who came in very much traumatized
live with an uncle who had settled there before the genocide.
because they had witnessed their parents being killed in
Traumatized, she did not speak about her experiences
front of them.
for years. When she was a sophomore in high school,
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Interview With a Rwandan Genocide Survivor (continued)
her teacher invited a Holocaust survivor named David
Our goal was always the same. And that was to raise
Gewirtzman to speak to the class. This marked a turning
awareness, not only about what happened to us—
point in Jacqueline’s life.
myself in 1994 and him during the Holocaust—but
to talk about hate, to talk about racism, to talk about
I remember that David talked about one day being a happy
discrimination, to talk about anti-Semitism, things that
child going to school, collecting stamps.
And he talked about how all his rights and
the rights of other Jewish people in Poland
were taken away slowly. And about being
sent to a [Nazi] concentration camp and
all the persecution and the loss that he had
suffered. In addition to being one of the
students who was obviously very saddened
ultimately reaped genocide or enabled
‘This is not
history—
genocide is not
history, the
Holocaust is
not history.’
and who cried as David was telling his story,
genocide to happen. And these are things that
are happening even now, as we speak. And
we were helping young people, in particular,
realize that this is not history—genocide is
not history, the Holocaust is not history. This
is something that is a major threat in this
day and age. And unless we do something
about it, and we are educated about it and
I also began to see some similarities between what had
we understand it and we participate in its prevention, it’s
happened to him and what happened to me. Although
going to continue to happen.
he was many, many years older than me and had lived
in Poland, on a different continent, we had something in
Today, Jacqueline carries on the work that she and David
common. And that was that both of us were children one
began together. In 2014, she founded the Genocide Survivors
day and our lives were dramatically changed, not because
Foundation, a nonprofit committed to preventing genocide
of anything that we had done, but simply because of who
and helping survivors of mass atrocities.
we were.
David and Jacqueline connected through a thank-you note
Interview conducted by Veronica Majerol and edited and
that Jacqueline wrote. David drew Jacqueline into his work
condensed by Kaaren Sorensen. To read the full interview,
raising awareness about the Holocaust and the present-day
go to scholastic.com/holocaustteacher
threat of genocide. Until David’s death in 2012, they spoke
together in schools, churches, and synagogues all over the
U.S. and in Europe.
Questions
1.How was Jacqueline able to survive the Rwandan
genocide?
4.What does Jacqueline mean when she says that
“genocide is not history”?
2.Why do you think she didn’t speak about her
experience for years?
5.What does this interview with Jacqueline add to
Justus Uwayesu’s story in the Upfront article?
3.How did meeting a Holocaust survivor help
Jacqueline cope with her own past?
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