Holocaust as the Result of Colonial Racism in Left to Tell Annmicha Blugh College

History and individual testament as narrated in the novel Left to Tell, authored by Immaculée Ilibagiza clearly defines the trajectory of holocaust as springing up as a natural consequence of an established racism. In its embryonic stages, the story unfolds under a climate of almost inbuilt prejudice. The colonial history of Rwanda engrains tribalism and polarizes both indigenous ethnicities, Hutu and Tutsi, to the point of bitter and endemic intolerance. Later in life, Immaculée understands that “the German colonists and the Belgian ones that followed, converted Rwanda’s existing social structure … into a discriminatory, race-based class system” (Ilibagiza 14). For Rwanda, the formal introduction of colonialism in The Conference of Brussels 1890 has been instrumental in dividing territory and people to initiate rule and consolidate power. Unsurprisingly, Germany imperiously instills values of ethnic superiority in Rwanda to establish a colonial administration of government, alienating Hutus and Tutsis in the process. Historic documents such as Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf or My Struggle (1923) and Jacob Graf’s Heredity and Racial Biology for Students (1935) legitimise social darwinism, a so-called natural order of ethnic...