Rwandan Holocaust survivor is honored at festival
PROVO — "I have been in the worst situation. But I want everyone to know if you put your trust in God there is always hope," said Immaculée Ilibagiza, a Rwanda Holocaust survivor. Ilibagiza received the Freedom Award at the Freedom Festival at Brigham Young University July 2. "No matter what problem you are going through, there is always hope," she said. "I have friends who are going through depression, or looking for a job and they feel their future is over. If only you can believe it, hope is there for you." Ilibagiza immersed herself in a relationship with God during 91 terrifying days hiding in a three foot by four foot bathroom with eight other women. When she was able to leave her hiding place, she found out her mother, father, and three brothers had all been killed. She lost every friend and neighbor she loved. Her faith and willingness to truly turn her seemingly hopeless situation over to God was her key to survival. The personal power she gained during the 91 days gave her the unbelievable ability to later forgive her family’s killers. She said it was praying the rosary constantly, especially the sorrowful mysteries, and reading the bible while hiding that helped her survive. Ilibagiza authored her story in her book titled "Left to Tell, Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust." In 1994, the president of Rwanda’s plane was shot down. Immediately a civil war broke out. The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda’s minority Tutsis and the moderates of its Hutu majority. Over the course of approximately 100 days, from April 6 through mid July, at least 500,000 people were killed. Most estimates are of a death toll nearer 1 million. Ilibagiza grew up in a Catholic family. She is a Tutsi. Her father was the administrator of Catholic schools in Rwanda. She learned she was a Tutsi, and became aware of the ethnic divide between the Tutsis and Hutus when she was in the fourth grade. Her teacher sent her home because she did not know who she was as a Tutsi. She said the Tutsis and Hutus in her village loved each other. Her family never mentioned anything negative about the Hutus. In 1994, Ilibagiza had been away at school studying electronic and mechanical engineering at the National University of Rwanda. Her family wanted her to come home for the Easter break because they missed her. She had an exam to take, but went home because they had called. Her brother told her on the morning of one of the holy days that the president had been killed. They knew war was going to break out. "From the moment the president’s plane was shot down, the country closed down and the Hutu militia in Rwanda started shooting and killing Tutsis with machetes in their homes and in their villages," said Ilibagiza. "From the first day, I remember people started to come to my home asking my father for advice because he was a person the people respected," said Ilibagiza. Three days after the genocide started, we had about 10,000 people at my home. There was a group of people throwing stones at our house and at the people who had gathered. My father was trying to protect his family and the village. I knew that if any of us would be killed it would be him because in the past wars they had killed the men. So I gave him my brown Scapular because I knew if he died he would go to heaven from the promises of Mary. I loved my father. I knew him as a person who did the right things and who made good decisions. "He gave me his rosary beads," said Ilibagiza. "It was a moment where I felt that maybe this would be our last conversation. It turned out, the rosary beads were all I had left plus the clothes on my back." Her father told her to go to a local pastor’s house to hide so she would not be raped. Her brothers and her mother stayed with her father because her mother said she could not leave her boys. "I did what my father told me to do," said Ilibagiza. "The pastor was a Hutu. Even though the government had started to tell people to kill Tutsis, you could still trust people. The pastor was very scared to hide me, but he was nice even though he refused to shake my hand. This was all so crazy because the Tutsis and the Hutus had co-mingled for many years. We look alike, we are almost the same people, just from different tribes. "I never thought anything like this was possible," said Ilibagiza. "Trying to survive something like this, you learn how much the soul can do to survive. We could not speak or move because there were always mobs of Hutus around the house. We could only flush the toilet when they flushed the other toilet in the house. This house was one of the few in the village that had two bathrooms. In Rwanda people visited each other a lot. So there were so many people coming in and out of the house throughout the day. "I remember after three days in the bathroom, I was complaining. I thought I was such a hero," said Ilibagiza. "I wanted to tell my mother. Then after one week, I started to face reality, I was there to stay. "I never wanted to die. I never gave up," said Ilibagiza. "I thought, I have to live, and that depended on God completely. The devil was trying to tell me people are looking for you to kill you. They are five inches away from you. That was when I had to say where can I get the strength to go on? I remember I would sweat out of fear and out of battling inside trying to have the trust in God. "I would pray and meditate for hours at a time," said Ilibagiza. "I never knew there was so much reality in God. I prayed every time they came to search, but there was a time when the devil was telling me they were going to rape and kill me. That is when I told myself, let me pray every minute of my time. I remembered the rosary my father gave me. I thought maybe if I pray the rosary, the voices would stop. That helped me feel like I was moving an inch ahead every second. "The hiding turned out to be a great gift because I never would have understood so much about God, about forgiveness, about love, about life itself, or about being responsible, or part of the world," said Ilibagiza. "I stayed strong by praying the rosary over and over. As I prayed the Lord’s prayer, I understood, ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’" Ilibagiza asked the pastor for a bible and read it all the time. She said when she felt love she felt like her prayers were reaching God and she believed they would be saved. But when she felt down and unforgiving, she felt like she could not even face God. "I wanted God so much to be there for me. I wondered how can I move toward God," said Ilibagiza. "God was telling me, ‘You need to be sincere in your prayers, and to love and forgive other people.’ Everything in the bible is about love. I never knew what it meant to surrender until one time when I could not forgive the killers and yet I wanted to. I asked God to help me and that was a huge step. When I surrendered all my pain and suffering and my inability to forgive over to God, I felt much lighter and my heart was filled with joy. The joy comes from praying to God."
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