Philip Gourevitchs' Travels To Rwanda Summary

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ransacking pharmacies, were bussed from massacre to massacre. Radio announcers reminded listeners not to take pity on women and children (115). The title of Gourevitch's book, was in a letter written by two thousand refugees in a church in Mugonero who sent it to their pastor asking to be saved from the slaughter:

"Our dear leader, Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, ...We wish to inform you that we have heard that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. We therefore request you to intervene on our behalf and talk with the Mayor. We believe that, with the help of God who entrusted you the leadership of this flock, which is going to be destroyed, your intervention will be highly appreciated, the same way as the Jews were saved by Esther." (42)

However, most of those held up in the church met the fate of many of the Jews of Auschwitz 50 years earlier, except that in this case machetes were used instead of gas chambers. Those interviewed by Gourevitch recall Pastor ...

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refugees who fled the country as the Rwandan genocide came to a close: "What made the camps almost unbearable to visit was the spectacle of hundreds of international humanitarians being openly exploited as caterers to what was probably the single largest society of fugitive criminals against humanity ever assembled."(267)
Overall, this book was very unorganized. The stories of the genocide should have been broken down into chapters devoted to each individual, which would have given a truer picture of the devastation on both an international and personal level. Every Interview was mixed in together, the author should have, given each chapter to a different interview, would've been ...

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