NORTHAMPTON — It was 1994 in Rwanda, and the genocide was just beginning. The U.S. embassy was scrambling to get Americans out of the country, but Carl Wilkens would not abandon the people he’d pledged to help.
“I’m not leaving,” he said at the time, though it meant his wife and three children were getting on a plane without him.
He recounted the moments before a crowd of about 50 people in the Northampton High School auditorium on Monday. The evening event capped a day full of talks and classroom visits arranged by two seniors at the school, Lily Rogers and Ari Bourke, both 17. The two were inspired to reach out to Wilkens after watching him in the documentary “Ghosts of Rwanda” in their class, called “History of the Holocaust and Modern Genocide.”
To bring him to Northampton from Spokane, Washington, Bourke and Rogers applied for an emergency Northampton Education Foundation grant to cover the $1,300 price tag.
The two students said they didn’t know about the Rwandan genocide before the course, and they realized so many of their classmates were in danger of graduating without learning about it.
“From there, it was like — there’s a hole in people’s knowledge,” Bourke said of the realization that the events do not appear in the Massachusetts curriculum.
He said Wilkens’ message resonates with Americans trying to wrap their minds around U.S.-Syria affairs. He said he could feel the energy in the room early in the day Monday as Wilkens talked with students about people dying in Syria.
“‘This is happening,’” he recalled him say. “When he said that, you could feel the room putting the pieces together.”
Rogers said she was struck by Wilkens’ war against the “us versus them mentality.”
“That’s something that can be applied to our political situation,” she said.
Wilkens lived with his family for several years leading up to the fighting in Rwanda, having moved there as an aid worker with the Adventist Development and Relief Agency. Despite being a white American man with a U.S. passport that could quickly transport him to safety, he chose to use that privilege in the pursuit of helping others. Throughout 88 days of genocide, he saw children killed by mortar bombs, and he thought he’d never see his wife and children again. He bought powdered milk from murderers to feed orphans.
“It was a network of thieves and killers that helped me feed the orphanage,” he said.
His message: Let go of your fear, as it clouds your ability to exercise compassion and make decisions for the good of others. And don’t stay angry or resentful — even against murders who’ve killed your friends and family — as it only serves to damage you further.
He recalled a time, during the fighting, when a military man came to his door. Wilkens said he suspected the man was involved with the killings, and so he did not allow him to enter the house, lest he kill the others inside. He said that while he doesn’t regret the decision not to let him in, he wishes he’d waited at the gate with the man. When it comes to people — refugees or strangers — knocking on your door, he said empathy is crucial.
“If we’re turning our backs on these people but we’re not willing to stand next to them, we’re going to regret it,” he said.
Years after the fighting subsided, Wilkens said, he visited a Rwandan prison and found one of the orchestrators who killed a friend’s family. “I was so angry in that moment,” he said of the encounter. “I found the guy who killed Johnson’s mother.”
He said he left the prison that day unable to forgive the man, but returned a year later. During the second meeting, he said the man confessed to trying to kill Wilkens in a standoff at an orphanage he was trying to protect.
“He said it wasn’t God’s plan — this coming from a man who killed 2,000 people,” Wilkens said.
In that moment, he said he felt the man’s remorse.
“We stood up; we shook hands. It led to an embrace,” Wilkens said. “It’s a journey.”
Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@gazettenet.com.