This is a book that tries details the unthinkable. Elizabeth Neuffer in The Key to My Neighbor’s House provides historical information on the genocides that took place in Bosnia and in Rwanda in the early 1990s. Adding to this is personal stories of different people who had witnessed and lived through these atrocities. They lived and continued to carry on from day to day and to seek justice through Tribunals held at the Hague.
In 1994, in Rwanda, more than 800,000 Tutsis were killed with machetes, guns and any other means by Hutus. The author makes the point that Hutus and Tutsis were not necessarily different ethnic groups but more like different castes. In Bosnia, tensions between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims shattered apart with the mass murder.
In both of these cases the most heart wrenching peace of it for me was that we were there. The rest of the world watched on television from a distance as these atrocities took place. UN peace keepers stood by as these killings took place. This book gives personal stories life as they talk about the despair and hopelessness they felt as they tried to get the world to act as those they loved were separated from them or killed.
She goes through the discovering of evidence through stories and unearthing of mass graves. And she chronicles the search for justice both in the courtroom at the International Tribunals and the personal journey of telling your story and owning what people survived. This is a difficult book to read because of the things that were done and the horror that it was not that long ago and that the world was aware as it happened.
I want to share one excerpt, the one that gave the book it’s name (I imagine.) The judge had asked a former principal of an elementary school how such a thing could happen with people who had gone to school together and lived as neighbors. He replied, “It is difficult to answer, this question. I am also at a loss. I had the key to my next-door neighbor’s house who was a Serb and he had my key. That is how we looked after each other. We visited each other for holidays. My best man at my wedding was a Serb. We were friends and he was the same one who threatened us. It is inexplicable what happened to those people. It was some kind of madness. I mean, one did not know whom to trust any more and I do not have a word of explanation for that.”
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