Masakra Jezydów rozpoczęta przez Państwo Islamskie w 2014 r. może mieć tylko jedną nazwę – ludobójstwo. W obozach dla uchodźców na terenie irackiego Kurdystanu ks. Patrick Desbois i Costel Nastasie przeprowadzili rozmowy z ponad setką osób, które przeżyły tę masakrę. Kobiety jezydzkie wzięte w niewolę przez Państwo Islamskie czujnie obserwowały swoich oprawców i różne sekrety ich przestępczej organizacji.
Seks, zbrodnia i pieniądz – zeznania ocalałych świadków obalają wszelkie pozory. Jedynym celem „bojowników Allaha” jest nieograniczona władza. Ale do realizacji tego celu islamiści potrzebują określonych narzędzi. I znajdują je w Jezydach, mniejszości etnicznej i religijnej. Mężczyźni, o ile nie złożą przysięgi na wierność islamowi, okazują się bezużyteczni i są natychmiast likwidowani. Natomiast kobiety stają się niewolnicami seksualnymi lub reproduktorkami, których potomstwo powiększyć ma szeregi bojowników Państwa Islamskiego. A chłopców – poprzez okrutny trening i przy pomocy narkotyków – przygotowuje się także do zadań terrorystycznych. Z dyskrecją i bolesną empatią ks. Patrick Debois pochyla się nad zapomnianymi ofiarami tych zbrodni, prezentując nam szczegóły wydarzeń, określanych przez niego mianem ludobójstwa „wysoce praktycznego”. To głos upominający się o człowieczeństwo, o to człowieczeństwo, którego zabrakło na początku XXI wieku…
Patrick Debois – ksiądz katolicki, założyciel i przewodniczący międzynarodowej organizacji Yahad-In Unum, prowadzi od lat badania nad Holokaustem, sprzeciwia się antysemityzmowi, dąży do zacieśnienia relacji między katolikami a Żydami.
Costel Nastasie – pochodzi z Rumunii, potomek deportowanych podczas II wojny światowej; prowadzi badania nad ludobójstwem Romów. Przewodniczący Stowarzyszenia Roma Dignity.
Patrick Desbois is a French Roman Catholic priest, former head of the Commission for Relations with Judaism of the French Bishops' Conference and consultant to the Vatican. He is the founder of the Yahad-In Unum, an organization dedicated to locating the sites of mass graves of Jewish victims of the Nazi mobile-killing units in the former Soviet Union. He received the Légion d'honneur, France's highest honor, for his work documenting the Holocaust.
"I certainly think that another Holocaust can happen again. It did already occur; think of Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia." (Miep Giles) and now through this book think of the Yazidi people, the Kurds.
The Yazidis are members of the Kurdish religious minority. They believe in one God who has placed the care of the world under the protection of seven holy beings, the first being Malek Taus who causes both good and evil to happen to people. In 2014, these people were targeted by ISIS and their extermination and subjugation is the topic of this book.
Going into refugee camps, the authors of this book and their team interviewed over two hundred survivors of the ISIS genocide. Reading this heart breaking tragic tale brought to mind the deceitful hateful behavior, the savage intents of ISIS, and the fact that once again religion used in its most insidious way has killed wantonly. The interviews and the stories will inflame you, they will fill you with idea that ISIS is pure evil. These people, the men, the women and the children were murdered, torn from their homes, killed while families watched. The women and young children were taken, the younger women and girls were used as sex slaves traded from one man to the next and raped violently over and over again. If they became pregnant their babies were taken with the intention of raising a boy as a killer, dedicated to eliminate the kafir (the unbelievers), the baby girls raised to become mothers of those dedicated to the ISIS and their path to the ultimate destruction of those kafirs. Also mentioned and what sent many shivers down my spine was that genocide does not exist unless neighbors are aware of it and at times participants in it being carried out.
The message in this book is clear. ISIS is still perpetrating their philosophy, the laws of sharia. Yes, they are not in the news so much, and yes, claims have been made that they are destroyed but are they? Children have been and probably are being trained to be "soldiers of God". These children know no kindness, they only learn of death and destruction, becoming desensitized to human suffering, with one goal in mind, that of killing the infidels.
This was an extremely difficult book to read. I kept on thinking didn't we vow to the mantra of "never again" after the Holocaust? Yet here we are with a number of genocides in present time after repeating that never again phrase. Did we learn nothing at all?
Thank you to Patrick Desbois, Costel Nastasie, Shelley Temchin, Arcade Publishing, and Edelweiss for a copy of this harrowing traumatic look inside the workings of ISIS. It is a book that I will never forget.
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
I appreciate everything he has done for survivors of genocide, but this wasn't my favorite book. He often inserts his own comments and doesn't let the victims speak fully for themselves, ex. comments about their appearance or age. He gets off-topic. It's more like a memoir of his travel to Iraq to interview Yezidis. What really did it for me in not liking this book is justifying the bombing of civilians in Germany in WWII. I prefer the book "With Ash on their Faces."
The interviews and research in this book is admiring considering the subject matter about ISIS and child abduction, genocide and sex slavery. This is a very heavy book and it's less than 200 pages.
I would have given the book 5 stars however..
I think the book could have used some more chapters or published more of the interviews rather than the author bringing in the WW2 comparisons that I felt weren't really relevant and far fetched. Sometimes it was cringeworthy towards the point of inappropriate. I wish instead the author had added more to the book like include a few more descriptive notes or illustrations or photos of some of the locations he was heading too. Maps would have been great. Yet completely understand if publishing the book that was a limiting factor. I still would also have liked some more of a description of his guides and support group while doing the research for this book. I found he skipped on so many opportunities for more chapters to talk about. I wish he talked more about his experiences im longer detail at the refugee camps, his travels from A to B , he touched about his guide, I wish he talked about them more.
If the WW2 comparisons was removed I would consider this a great work of non fictional research about ISIS and the book's message. I still still recommend . Definitely a good study book for a high school student for a paper .
This book strives to do an important and necessary work. So many Yazidis are still, to this day, dealing with the fallout from ISIS’s genocide perpetrated against them. It is vital to tell their story and let the world know. One line that still rings in my ears, “We are fine with blood being spilt, so long as the stains are in another part of the world.”
This is why it was frustrating that the last 25 percent of the book stumbled into forced comparisons with Nazi Germany or haphazard assessments of ISIS’s motives (ranging from money, sex, manpower, or religion). It felt like the last part of the book deviated from the aforementioned goal of telling the story of the victims and letting the world know what happened.
Despite the shortcomings, books like these are vital for a world largely ignorant to the Yazidi struggle.
Horrible. I can't say unspeakable because we allow this sort of thing to persist. I was unaware of the extent of ISIS use of drugs, slavery, and child soldiers.
Daunting insight into the sinister machinations of ISIS. Age old battle - masquerading as a zealous religious quest, but in actuality is nothing more than a twisted grasping to accumulation of power, sex and money masked by the obfuscation of religion. And behind that mask is ISIS.
Compelling, simply written, straight forward. A brave thing these people did. A difficult thing bringing into the light the darkness that is ISIS. Haunting stories that will linger forever. Not to be forgotten.
Too many times throughout the book, the author hand-waves the experiences of people, telling instead of showing. What was there wasn't bad, but there could easily and should easily have been much more.