Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

These prompts can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before or after reading the book.

Pre-Reading “Icebreaker”

Left to Tell is the harrowing true story of Immaculée Ilibagiza, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. After surviving this ordeal, Immaculée went on to become a motivational speaker. She often discusses Faith and Forgiveness as two factors that helped her to recover from the atrocities she experienced in 1994.

• What characteristics of Immaculée’s Faith might have helped her to survive this ordeal? With what other stories are you familiar in which faith helped individuals to endure and overcome traumatic events?
• What questions do you have that might be more thoroughly explained in the book?

Teaching Suggestion:  In this 60 Minutes interview (content warning: violence, killing; corpses of genocide victims; mentions of fears of rape, violence, and death), Immaculée shares more about her story of survival and shows the infamous bathroom in which she and 7 other women hid for 91 days in order to survive their village’s massacre. The interview includes graphic visual depictions of violence. If you decide to share the interview or excerpts of it with students, they might discuss their general impressions of the clip while pointing out moments in which the themes of Faith and Forgiveness surface.

• From Immaculée’s YouTube channel, “Diary of Immaculée” gives another brief overview of her experiences, this one featuring images of Immaculée’s family and life in 1994.
• In Loyola University—New Orleans’s keynote address from November 2021, Immaculée talks about how she has learned to forgive.

Post-Reading Analysis

Immaculée attributes her faith as one of the primary forces—if not the primary force—that allowed her to survive the horrors of the Rwandan genocide.

What role has religion played in other genocides throughout history? Consider the Holocaust; the Armenian genocide of 1915; and the Rohingya genocide of Myanmar.

Teaching Suggestion: The relationship between religion and genocide is a complicated one. Help students to better understand that Immaculée’s belief in God played a crucial role in helping her to get through unspeakably traumatic events. There are many examples from the Holocaust in which survivors drew upon Judaism as a source of strength to persevere. Conversely, many atrocities are committed in the name of religion or in the name of religious persecution. Students may conclude that the relationship between religion and genocide is complex and nuanced.

• In his April 2020 article entitled “Can Religion Help Survivors Regain Their Humanity? A Reflection on the Rwandan Genocide,” University of Southern California Professor of Religion Donald E. Miller further investigates if religion can help victims “regain their humanity” and a “sense of dignity” after the atrocities of genocide and war. Students might discuss how Immaculée’s story complements Professor Miller’s findings as well as the ways in which it diverges from them.
• The American Psychological Association examines how people’s beliefs and their faith changed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in the article “Faith in a Time of Crisis."
• PBS explores the effect of the Holocaust on survivors’ personal beliefs around religion in “Holocaust Survivors: The Search for Faith.”