VIDEO
A Good Man In Hell: General Romeo Dallaire and the Rwanda Genocide. Videocassette*.
© Committee on Conscience/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2003.
Running Time: Approximately 13 minutes.
*NOTE: A DVD version with the same name is also available, and includes not only the 13-minute program featured here, but also the entire interview between General Dallaire and Ted Koppel of ABC News.
REVIEW
“All humans are human – there are no humans more human than others.” General Dallaire ends this short videotape with this statement. Upon conclusion of the tape, most students are left simply spellbound. A product of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, A Good Man In Hell is a riveting story, providing basic historical background to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 mixed with footage from an interview of General Dallaire conducted at the Museum by ABC News Nightline’s Ted Koppel. Commentary by the general is interspersed with archival footage of the genocide as he details his frustrations with his United Nations mandate to not interfere in the crisis.
Charged largely with protecting foreigners on Rwandan soil, Dallaire expounds on specific incidents when his troops had to withhold their fire even as lives were lost before their eyes. The inaction is based on the justification that Dallaire’s troops would become the “third belligerent”; Dallaire tells the story of a young girl with a baby on her back who was hacked to death with a machete while a young soldier negotiated with an angry mob to spare her life. Following his orders not to use his weapon, the young corporal negotiated, and negotiated and all the while it was one teenaged girl cutting up another teenaged girl. Camera shots of the Museum audience’s horror at the telling of this story only make it more impactful for students watching the video, bringing them into the audience’s experience.
Dallaire touches on post-traumatic stress syndrome, and tells of the young corporal who came home after the conflict – home to Nightline, to hockey… What war? No western nation’s national security was threatened by the Rwandan civil war/genocide. For those who have seen the Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda, the line spoken by Nick Nolte (playing a character all-too-close to Romeo Dallaire) to Paul, the hotel manager, hammers home here:
“To them Paul, you’re not even a nigger. You’re an African, Paul!!
This is how Dallaire must have felt while the UN tied his hands and made he and his men stand by and watch as over ½ million Africans were slaughtered (some estimates place the final toll at close to a million deaths). Just how significant were these people in the eyes of the world? “All humans are human – there are no humans more human than others.”
PASSAGE/QUOTE FOR CLASSROOM USAGE
During the showing of the video, or before, stress the scene where Dallaire relates the story of the young corporal and the brutal fight between the teenaged girls. After viewing, or upon a second viewing of that segment, remind the students of the part of the film where Dallaire discusses the soldiers who came home to Nightline and hockey. Then, read aloud or pass out copies of the following passage:
The term “bystander” does not apply to leading Nazis or guards in concentration camps, but to “ordinary” citizens. In some fashion these people simply went about their daily lives during one of the ghastliest dictatorships the world has ever known. They continued to work and raise their children. Those who lived near concentration camps tended their gardens and had regular dealings with those who worked and ran the camps. After November 9, 1938, when thousands of Jewish-owned businesses in Germany suddenly had new owners, people continued to shop in them as though nothing had changed.
They were people who, to their vast relief, were convinced after 1945 that they had not been directly involved in the genocide of the Jews (from Victoria Barnett’s Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity During the Holocaust. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2000, page xv).
Ask:
RATIONALE FOR USAGE/UNIT RELEVANCE
I use this video to introduce my course, which is entitled Social Injustices (open primarily to college-bound juniors and seniors). My feeling is that it “primes the pump” for my students – it gives them an anchor for the topics we’ll approach during the semester, and it gets them thinking about moral issues, not only in the contemporary world, but as those same issues might relate to them as moral agents in the world.
CLASSROOM METHOD OF USAGE
I preface the video with just a short “Here’s what to look for”, then pop it in the VCR. Afterward, we discuss it. Students always are very willing to discuss some of the anecdotes related by Dallaire, and his ending statement serves as a nice springboard for discussion on what it means to be human, what we do to create the image of “the other”, and on our responsibility and accountability to our fellow man.
STUDY QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION GUIDE
You may pass out the following worksheet either for students to do during their viewing of the film, or upon its completion.
Name _________________________________
A Good Man In Hell: General Romeo Dallaire and the Rwanda Genocide