We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families

by Philip Gourevitch

of an original population of about seven and a half million, at least eight hundred thousand people were killed in just a hundred days.

Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building. A vigorous totalitarian order requires that the people be invested in the leaders’ scheme, and while genocide may be the most perverse and ambitious means to this end, it is also the most comprehensive.

The genocide had been tolerated by the so-called international community, but I was told that the UN regarded the corpse-eating dogs as a health problem.

The West’s post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.

“You cannot count on the international community unless you’re rich, and we are not,” he said. “We don’t have oil, so it doesn’t matter that we have blood, or that we are human beings.”