Beautiful Souls: The Courage and Conscience of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times Highlight

Genocide “is an exercise in community building,” Gourevitch observed—“it brought people together.” One perpetrator likened hunting down Tutsis to “communal work duty,” and admitted that he’d enjoyed it. “The genocide was like a festival. At day’s end, or any time there was an occasion, we took a cow from the Tutsis, and slaughtered it and grilled it and drank beer … It was a festival. We celebrated.”