![\"photo](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/may-08-cov.08.Consolee-Nishimwe_courtesy.jpeg\")
<\/a>\u201cAs a survivor, it\u2019s not very easy to talk about it because what happened to us was painful. It\u2019s not easy for any survivor to share their personal experience of what they have endured,\u201d Nishimwe said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though it\u2019s been many years, it still lives within us. For me, when I share, I always think about those who are not ready yet to share their testimonies, and I carry them within me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The daughter of schoolteachers in the western part of Rwanda, Nishimwe described her childhood as a happy one, with a large coterie of friends and family nearby. Nonetheless, life for the Tutsi was never easy, said Nishimwe, who was 14 years old when the genocide started.<\/p>\n
In elementary school, teachers humiliated Tutsi students by having them stand up before the class to identify themselves as Tutsi. Later, the RTLM radio station and Rwandan newspapers would broadcast and publish propaganda aimed at dehumanizing Tutsi.<\/p>\n
On April 6, 1994, a missile shot down a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, both of whom were Hutu. The Tutsi were blamed generally for the assassinations, RTLM radio said all Tutsi must be killed, and widespread violence ensued.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very scary for all of us where we lived in our villages. As Tutsi, we had to run to seek refuge mostly with the Hutu, our neighbours, the people who were around us, the people we grew up with \u2013 my parents used to teach some of their children \u2013 and the people we went to church with,\u201d Nishimwe said. \u201cYou never knew who was going to be kind. You never knew who was going to help because everyone changed, completely changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the run, with roadblocks all around managed by Hutu with clubs and machetes ready to kill Tutsi, her family \u2013 Nishimwe, her parents, three brothers and a sister \u2013 like other Tutsi, hid in the bushes and sought refuge in what they hoped would be friendly Hutu homes, not knowing how long they would be able to stay or if their hosts might turn on them. The potential consequences for harbouring Tutsi were severe.<\/p>\n
Eventually, Nishimwe\u2019s father thought it best that he separate from the family. Killers would find him on April 15, 1994. Shortly afterwards, her three brothers were also murdered.<\/p>\n
Nishimwe, her mother and sister were captured by Hutu. While in captivity, Nishimwe was brutally raped and considers it a \u201cmiracle\u201d that she survived.<\/p>\n
Nishimwe talks of her mother as a true hero.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe went back to teach [after the genocide]. She was able to remind my sister and me, and all of us around her, that we should never carry hatred within us, which was not going to be easy because of the pain we carry within ourselves. I\u2019m grateful for her,\u201d Nishimwe said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing back to school, there was a lot of trauma and nightmares. But I had friends who had lost their entire families. I have friends who don\u2019t even have anybody in their family. I\u2019m one of the few survivors, at least, who has a parent.\u201d<\/p>\n
After moving to the United States in 2001, Nishimwe went to therapy. With that help, she began writing about her experiences, which, she said, enabled her to find some means of expressing what she had endured.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt helped me to start journaling every painful experience that I\u2019ve gone through and allowed me also to find words. Because, sometimes, when you have gone through extreme trauma, you don\u2019t even have words to describe the pain you carry within yourself,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In 2012, Nishimwe published Tested to the Limit: A Genocide Survivor\u2019s Story of Pain, Resilience and Hope<\/i>, an account of her experiences during the 1994 events and her life afterwards.<\/p>\n
Sam Margolis<\/b> has written for the<\/i> Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Consolee Nishimwe, a Rwanda-born author, motivational speaker and survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi, spoke from New York on April 21 to an online audience as part of the In Conversation with a Survivor series hosted by Toronto\u2019s Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre. Every year, between April and July, Rwandan communities around the world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[24836,21009,24240,2791,243,2893],"class_list":["post-48892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national","tag-consolee-nishimwe","tag-friends-of-simon-wiesenthal-centre","tag-fswc","tag-genocide","tag-rwanda","tag-survivors"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}