Surviving Genocide - 60 Minutes

Recently, I have come across a clip from 60 Minutes about the Rwandan genocide. It was the story of Immaculee Ilibagiza, a Tutsi survivor. When the killing began Immaculee fled to a Hutu minister's house and begged him to hide her. He did. Along with six other women, Immaculee hid in an extremely small bathroom for ninety-one days. While the conditions were almost unbearable, what was going on outside was even worse. There were "no gas chambers, no round-ups like in Nazi-Germany; the Hutus just stopped and slaughtered the Tutsis in their tracks with machetes." Immaculee recalls that she "could hear the screaming...every time a part of me died...I was dying alive." One day Hutus came to search the minister's house, not the first time, and one of them called out Immaculee's name, he said, "We have killed three hundred and ninety nine cockroaches, Immaculee I want you to be the 400th." All she could think was, "he knows where I am...he will kill me." "Life swept out of people in a second...I became dry instantly. I couldn't even find saliva to swallow." Terrible thoughts constantly streamed through the minds of these women. For instance, "will they just shoot me?" "will I be tortured?" and "when will this happen?" All the women in the bathroom knew they would be killed, there was no doubt about it. One woman even made the minister promise to put "doo" on her corpse so that the dogs wouldn't eat her. Despite these understandable, yet terrifying thoughts, none of the women were ever found. The minister was able to save all of them. He knew that "if they were found he would be forced to kill them and then he would be killed as well."

The women ended up leaving the bathroom on what they called "Liberation Day". At 2:00 AM the seven of them were taken by the minister to a French compound. There, Immaculee discovered that both of her parents and her two brothers had been killed. Her father had been "shot while getting food for a neighbor's children" and "his body was used as a road block." After the genocide was over, Immaculee was left with no family and only two-thirds of herself, she lost forty pounds and recalls that she "looked like a skeleton, I could see every single bone." Now, years later, Immaculee Ilibagiza is trying to spread awareness of genocide. She has even written a book titled "Left to Tell" and gives lectures. She is trying to not only convince those people who believe that the "genocide never happened" that it did, but also show people what this kind of genocide is like to ensure that "atrocities like this never happen again."

For the full interview go to (a warning: there are a few graphic shots during the interview, similar to the ones we've seen in Hotel Rwanda):

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3004020n&tag=related;photovideo