Following the publication of the autobiographical book “No Greater Love” by Tharcisse Seminega and the French translation “L’amour qui enraya la haine” in 2019, the German translation entitled “Liebe besiegt Hass” will be published on April 22, 2024 to mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda.
Book content
DURING 100 DAYS in the spring of 1994, Rwanda’s horrific plunge into the depths of inhuman terror claimed an estimated 800,000 lives. The fastest genocide of modern times was terrifying in its proximity: murderers and victims were neighbors, friends, church parishioners, work colleagues, even spouses. The murderers carried out their “work” with crude tools – machetes, hoes, clubs studded with nails – and prepared lists of people condemned to death.
This was the terrifying reality for Tharcisse Seminega, a professor – a member of the Tutsi group – at the Université nationale du Rwanda (National University of Rwanda) in Butare. Together with his wife Chantal and his five children, he was deliberately selected for slaughter and placed in a hopeless situation – until help arrived from rescuers from the Hutu group, who put their own lives in danger to save Seminega’s family from the machetes.
Liebe besiegt Hass is the true story of the extraordinary courage and unwavering love of ordinary people who were a glimmer of hope during one of humanity’s most horrific self-inflicted tragedies.
Reviews
“He has … succeeded in … giving hope for the belief in humanity even where the state and society incessantly and demandingly propagate the opposite.”- Dr. Gerd Hankel, Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur, Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung
“A powerful and important story of harrowing terror and hatred, extraordinary kindness and courage, true faith and humanity.”- Glenn Mitoma, Lecturer at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University, NewYork, USA, ex. Director of the Dodd Human Rights Impact Program at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA
“Stories like these – of rescue and risk – deserve to be at the center of the memory of the genocide (in Rwanda).”- Scott Straus, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, USA and author of The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda
“After reading this book, you will see the community of Jehovah’s Witnesses who upheld their Christian ideals during the horror of 1994 with eyes of appreciation.”- J.J. Carney, Associate Professor of Theology, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska (USA), and author of Rwanda Before the Genocide: Catholic Politics and Ethnic Discourse in the Late Colonial Era
