Esther Mujawayo

"From her birth on a Rwandan hill to her current life in Germany. She tries to recount the appalling wound of the genocide in order to overcome the terrible guilty feeling about: "Why did I survive?"

"Even though they have lost everything, they still keep their role as a mother, as the caretaker of the household."

"The women still have a strong sense of purpose, which makes it easier for them to start their lives here."

"Alone, you are just by yourself, but together you can be strong again."

"From the worst, most terrible experience of the genocide against Tutsi in 1994, we managed to make something good, something beautiful."

"When you are constantly thinking you will be deported tomorrow, you cannot integrate, you cannot learn the language, you cannot start to live again."

"You can take your unfortunate history and use it to grow, to be even better."

"It is possible to become the man or the woman you used to be again, to become alive again."

"What is forgiveness? Forgive who? Who has asked me for forgiveness?"

"So we learned to deal with it very early in a way that doesn't stop you living."

"It was surrealistic. I was really thinking, 'Are we dreaming?' They deny everything, they deny everything."

"You have to learn again to trust, to reconcile yourself, your life, come to the point where you say this life is worth it and I have the right to live again."

"Most of the survivors we have today were broken in their bodies and their souls."

"What is the point of coming here if I’m going to be politically correct – I’m not a politician – the truth needs to be heard."

"I want to be nice and forgive, but I can’t because you failed us once, and now you are failing the survivors."

"I truly have hope because there are a lot of young people here. I challenge you all to make a difference, it’s in your hands."

"Too often, it is preceded by repeated warning signs that fail to receive a strong and early international response."

"We had been feeling the tension increase for a long time."

"Many of us have lost close friends. And we have asked ourselves: Why have we not seen the obvious? Why have we as church institutions not been able to push the international community to stop the killings?"

"The more we keep silent, the more history repeats itself."

"People mistake us talking about this to be out of hatred but that's not the case. It is because we want people to know how it happened. So if people know how this comes about, then it would be easy to stop such actions."

"If it could have happened, it can happen again."

"I do not know if my reaction comes from pride or if it's a survival instinct. I know only this; that to be fully alive rather than to survive, is a way of punishing them. It's the only revenge possible to me."

"Because I am not dead, I must live. Upon waking up, I find that I am as distraught as I was the night before."

"Every morning, I put one foot in front of the other and I don't know if I am moving forward or backward."

"I was not born to live. I died at birth. The small grave was already dug. Everybody was ready for my funeral. Only my mother clung to the crumpled little corpse, refusing to let it be buried."

"Why do I need to reconcile with the killer of my husband? I'm just glad to have a government that creates rule of law so we can live together peacefully."

"We were condemned to live."