Courage of one inspires next generation of leaders

The kids packed into the St. Viator High School gymnasium sit in silence as the ordinary man in a suit and tie at the podium calmly explains how it all went down. With tortured and decapitated bodies piled in the streets outside his hotel, and a gun pointed at his head, Paul Rusesabagina stood up to the murderers, machetes, machine guns and mayhem to save 1,268 people during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

"It was," the smiling, soft-spoken man says in the hallway after his speech on Monday, "not as easy as you think."

Not a single kid thinks there was anything easy in the actions of Rusesabagina, whose heroics were made into the movie "Hotel Rwanda." But students who watched the movie only got a taste of the horror.

"Some scenes cannot be as accurate as real life because it was so violent," says Rusesabagina, 55. "Who would want to watch that? No one would watch it."

Rusesabagina witnessed the genocide, which began on April 6, 1994, as he was celebrating with his brother and sister-in-law, who had graduated, found jobs and were about to become the first victims of the bloody clash between Hutus and Tutsis in the ravaged nation.

The next morning, Rusesabagina's 14-year-old son went to a buddy's home and found his friend, six sisters, mother and two neighbors lying in a pool of blood.

"Some of them were not completely dead," Rusesabagina says. "He (his son) stayed for four days in his room without talking to anyone."

Within the next 100 days, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered as the world distanced itself from the tragedy. A hotel manager, Rusesabagina turned his building into a haven and courageously used his wits and calm logic to disarm those consumed with evil and intent on killing.

"However hard a heart might be, it always has a small part of it that is soft," Rusesabagina tells the students. "It is our duty and obligation to look for that side."

Acknowledging that most of his students at this Arlington Heights Catholic high school hail from the "sheltered" comfort of the suburbs, Father Corey Brost says Rusesabagina's messages still hit home with the freshmen in his third-period religion class.

"Don't follow the crowd. Do what's right," a boy named Mike says.

"Stand up for everyone," says a girl named Mo.

"One person can change the world," adds a girl named Maggie.

A boy named Mack opens a discussion on Rusesabagina's remarkable ability to "turn the other cheek."

"It's not about backing down but about finding a way to stand up without using violence," Brost agrees.

While a world away from the violence in Africa, students such as George Theotokatos and Valerie Kiebala, both 16-year-old juniors, raise awareness by helping form a chapter of the national anti-genocide student group, STAND (standnow.org). Posters around school advertise savedarfur.org, or remind students that there is "One God, One World, One People."

Kiebala and Theotokatos say the student club contacted Rusesabagina through the club's volunteer work with the Sudanese Community Center in Naperville. Naperville native Sean Tenner is the executive director of the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation (www.HRRFoundation.org), which is located in Chicago and was founded in 2005 as a way to give voice to the victims and prevent further genocide "through truth, justice and reconciliation."

Rusesabagina, a Belgian citizen who is moving his family to San Antonio, Texas, says the United States learned on Sept. 11, 2001, that problems in other parts of the world are "our problems" and need to be addressed. He talks with students in the morning and ends his day with a speech to the public Monday night at St. Viator.

"I believe, myself, in the power of words," Rusesabagina says, noting words "can be the best and worst weapons" in society's arsenal.

Meeting with students for lunch in the cafeteria, Rusesabagina says he is confident "my message has gone through." He tells them of genocides throughout history and the promise of "Never Again."

"The future is yours," Rusesabagina concludes. "Go out and make 'Never Again' never again."

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