Rwanda genocide
Rwandan President visits German concentration camp

afrol News, 5 May - The Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, drew parallels between the Nazi Holocaust of the 1930's and 1940's and the 1994 Rwanda Genocide when he visited a concentration camp turned museum in Germany. 

Speaking after touring the Osthofen Concentration Camp museum, President Kagame said a common thread runs between the Holocaust and the Rwanda Genocide. "What they had in common was the attempt to demean and devalue human life through brutality and violence," he said. 

Kagame said that although the murder and brutality was done in the name of politics, politics is about the management of society for its development, not its destruction. "Wherever we live on the globe, we must work together to ensure that a few people do not ever drive us to the point of destruction," the Rwandan President said. 

Osthofen Concentration Camp was among the first such camps in Germany, opening in March 1933, the beginning of a period the curator of the museum Mr. Hans-Georg Meyer described as "the darkest period of German history." The camp is in a small town in the Rhineland Palatinate. People held at the concentration camps included Jews, Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, intellectuals and opponents of the Nazis, disabled people and other groups. 

President Kagame visited Osthofen as part of a six-day visit in the German state of Rhineland Palatinate, which has a special partnership with Rwanda. On Sunday, he presided over a week of celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary of this partnership. Visiting the pharmaceutical manufacturer Boehringer-Ingelheim, Kagame managed to achieve the free supply of Nevirapine - the drug that can prevent mother-to-child transmission of the HIV- to Rwanda. 

Sources:  Based on Rwandan govt and afrol archives 

© afrol News.    You can contact us at mail@afrol.com