Two-day event to revisit the Rwandan horrors of 1994

Two-day event to revisit the Rwandan horrors of 1994

American eyewitness to massacre that took 800,000 lives will share experiences Jan. 19

When genocide erupted in Rwanda in 1994, only one American remained in the country. Carl Wilkens, then director of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency in Rwanda, chose to stay in the capital city of Kigali, protecting and rescuing more than 300 Tutsi orphans.

Wilkens, currently chaplain of Milo Adventist Academy in Days Creek, Ore., will share his experiences during a presentation Wednesday, Jan. 19, from 4 to 6 p.m. in 100 Herring Hall. His lecture, titled “Rwanda Genocide: One Witness/Survivor Shares His Story,” will follow a special showing the PBS documentary “The Ghosts of Rwanda” in the same location Jan. 18 at 7:30 p.m. Both the talk and documentary are free and open to the public.

The two-day event is presented in connection with the Freshman Seminar, “Between Resistance and Collaboration: Individual Responses to National Socialism,” taught by Maria-Regina Kecht, associate professor of German.

"I think it will be a very special educational experience for our students to meet someone who dared to ‘go against the grain’ and risk his life in order to save those whom the entire world had forsaken,” Kecht said.

Wilkens received his bachelor’s degree in industrial technology in 1981 from Walla Walla College and taught for four years in Zimbabwe, Africa. He worked from 1985 to 1987 at the Yuka Mission Hospital in Zambia and then returned to the United States to receive his M.B.A. from the University of Baltimore. He studied French in France for six months before moving to Rwanda in 1990 with his wife, Teresa, and their three children.

When the genocide began, Wilkens and his wife decided that she and the children would leave, and he would stay. A U.S. Embassy official told Wilkens that he had to leave Rwanda, but Wilkens responded with a letter of refusal, which his wife delivered to the embassy on her way out of the country.

For three weeks, a government curfew kept Wilkens from leaving his home. When he finally did go out, Kigali was like a ghost town. Wilkens worked with the Red Cross to help those in need, focusing on the children in the Kigali orphanages.
In a story last summer, the International Herald Tribune called Wilkens “the Raoul Wallenberg of Rwanda” because of his courageous efforts to save the children during the 100 days of genocide that saw 800,000 people slaughtered.

Wilkens’ presentation at Rice University is sponsored by the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, the Dean of Humanities, the Center for the Study of Cultures, the Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, the Department of Religious Studies and the Department of German and Slavic Studies.

For more information, call 713-348-5845 or e-mail <kecht@rice.edu>.