September 2023

Paul Rusesabagina. Rusesabagina is credited with saving more than 1,000 people during the 1994 Rwandan genocide by sheltering them in the hotel he managed in the African country. His story inspired the 2004 movie Hotel Rwanda. I heard the Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient speak at a gathering years ago, and I still remember his answer to an audience member’s question about why he risked imprisonment to help strangers. If he had not helped, he said, he would have been imprisoned in his own conscience.