Paul Rusesabagina was never the most idealistic man. As manager of the Belgian-owned Mille Collines, a luxury hotel in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, he knew when to slip a bottle of Scotch to corrupt colonels to keep them in his pocket. Those street smarts became his salvation when Rwanda plummeted into genocide ten years ago in an event that transformed the genial businessman into an unlikely hero. As ethnic Hutus began killing their Tutsi neighbors, Rusesabagina—a Hutu married to a Tutsi woman—turned his hotel into an impromptu refugee camp for more than a thousand terrified Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Deserted by international peacekeepers, Rusesabagina began cashing in every favor he had ever earned, bribing the Rwandan Hutu soldiers and keeping the bloodthirsty militia (mostly) outside the gates during the hundred days of slaughter. In the end, he survived along with his wife and three children, as did most of the refugees he sheltered. Now his heroic story is recounted in Hotel Rwanda, a gripping account of a genocide that claimed an estimated 800,000 lives, mainly Tutsis but also many moderate Hutus. Mr. Rusesabagina visited St. Ignatius in the Fall of 2005.