“I Used Words”

A soft-spoken man confronts unspeakable violence

A father searches for his missing son during the Rwandan genocide, 1994. Photo: British Red Cross, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Thirty years ago, one of history’s most tragic and barbaric atrocities was finally stopped.…in Rwanda. In a spasm of 100 days, 800,000-1,000,000 men, women and children were massacred; countless more were maimed; 250,000 women were raped. Seventy per cent of the entire Tutsi population was murdered, along with thousands of incredibly brave Hutus who tried to intervene and protect their Tutsi neighbors. 

During the hellish genocide, Paul Rusesabagina exhibited amazing courage and selflessness.  A Hutu, he’d married a Tutsi. Paul saved the lives of 1,268 innocent men, women and children. When asked how he’d managed to stop so many armed men from killing people, he replied, “I used words.”

Read more about this remarkable man from Jay Nordlinger at National Review:

An Extraordinary Ordinary Man