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NORTH CANTON —Immaculee Ilibagiza was a carefree, 24-year-old college student when her beloved Rwanda was plunged into madness.One of four siblings and the only daughter of middle-class educators, Ilibagiza survived the Rwandan holocaust of 1994, which killed 1 million people. Out of a family of six, Ilibagiza and her youngest brother were the only survivors.Speaking at Walsh University on Thursday, Ilibagiza said her goal is to teach people that forgiveness is not only possible, but necessary if one intends to be truly free.In her best-selling 2006 autobiography “Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust,” she details how she and seven other women hid for three months in a bathroom the size of a food pantry, even as people around them were being raped, shot and hacked.
He atrocities began after the Belgian colonialist government in Rwanda issued identity cards, dividing the Rwandans by tribe, the Hutu, and the smaller but more powerful Tutsi, of which Ilibagiza was a member. When the Belgians withdrew from Rwanda, it created a power vacuum and triggered civil war. In 91 days, 1 million Rwandans, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus, systematically were killed.
Ilibagiza and the women eventually were rescued by French soldiers, who moved them to refugee camps; but their harrowing experience did not end there. They were left to fend for themselves as the French withdrew, but were saved by the RPF, the rebel Tutsi army, which stopped the carnage.Ilibagiza also credits the current government with encouraging people to move forward, though when President Paul Kagame called for the elimination of identity cards, some people initially resisted because they viewed them as a source of cultural pride.Ilibagiza said her book was instrumental in helping her surviving brother to heal. At the time of the war, he was in school in Senegal.A mother of two, Ilibagiza said she doesn’t share many details about the holocaust with her children because, “I don’t want to wound their hearts.”However, she takes them to Rwanda every summer, where her brother still lives with his family.