Elkin, Michael. "'HOTEL' of HEROISM; Africa's Oskar Schindler? Paul Rusesabagina raged against Rwandan genocide." Jewish Exponent 214.14 (6 Jan 2005). 35.

With the rampaging and hate-spewing Hutus lodging one of the worst holocausts in African history, "Hotel Rwanda" and its rack rate of survivors depended on the wondrous work of one man. And that man, Paul Rusesabagina - hailed as the African Oskar Schindler - may well be in a Hollywood audience come Oscar night, far from the killing fields of Africa, sitting alongside the actor who brings him to onscreen life, Don Cheadle.

Cheating death during the Rwanda genocide of 1994, Rusesabagina doesn't cheat audiences of the great gritty drama of his life, in which this five-star hotelier hustled to safety more than 1,200 men, women and children while four-star U.N. peacekeepers kept hands off, during a rampage in which 1 million Rwandans were massacred within a single month, April 1994. Rusesabagina opened his heart and hotel to the threatened Tutsis and moderate Hutus, risking his own life when extremist Hutus laid waste to huts and hovels, their machinations made more grisly by machetes, their weapons of mass destruction.

"Hotel Rwanda" opens Friday, Jan. 7, at area Ritz theaters. Is it a "Schindler's List" of one African's affirmation of life and love over hatred and harm? That film was, indeed, at the top of the filmmakers' list of inspirations, says Terry George, director/writer/producer of this highly likely Oscar hit. "That was our model," says the filmmaker of Steven Spielberg's multiple 1993 Oscar winner dealing with Schindler's selfless salvation of Jews during the Holocaust.

A moderate Hutu himself, Rusesabagina was horrified at the atrocities that took place just outside his luxurious lodging's door, its welcome mat stained with the blood and brutality of those hacked to death by extremists trying to regain a foothold in Rwanda after orchestrating the death of the moderate Hutu president in a plane crash. With horrors crashing in all around him, Rusesabagina bribed, begged and battled local officials for time and tolerance, and beseeched the United Nations for aid, even as that organization's only united front was one of inertia and, ultimately, betrayal.

Rusesabagina as a heroic Hutu? "This story is all in the tradition of ordinary men who do extraordinary things," says George. A Schindler of African roots: Certainly, adds the director, all of the Holocaust provided an extraordinary backdrop of bravery, its band of anti-Nazi activists serving as ancestors to Rusesabagina's role as one raging against annihilation of a chosen people -- in this case, the Tutsis chosen for destruction. (In today's Rwandan population, 15 percent of the nation is made up of Tutsis, with 84 percent Hutu; the remaining percent is Taw/Pygmoid.)

"Hotel Rwanda" is a story not without reservations; indeed, the United Nations and United States come off as insouciant about the insurgency. Recounts George: "It was a political decision made by Western forces that this conflict would be avoided in the wake of what happened previously in Somalia," in which American forces were ill-prepared to partake of the guerrilla warfare.

But how prepared was the mild-mannered manager of the Millie Collines Hotel - forever known as Hotel Rwanda - to provide what best could be described as extraordinary room service, its trays of tragedy to be cleaned by acts of human kindness? There was, he concedes, no room at the inn for self-indulgence. "I never thought I would survive the genocide," says Rusesabagina, accompanied by his wife and children in the Rwandan resort as the melee erupted. "But I said I would fight up to the end." The end was never far from sight as Hutu extremists targeted Rusesabagina for extermination: "I was one person protecting a lot of refugees; they wanted to get rid of me. I knew I was supposed to die."

But his die-hard acts of heroism saved more than a thousand of his compatriots. This braveheart isn't about braggadocio, however. "I never ever saw myself as a hero, even now. Maybe people see me as a Schindler. But he was there for five years," working to save Jews, while Rusesabagina's efforts occurred "for less than 100 days." But 100 days with him as a sentry of salvation. First and foremost, Rusesabagina was a Third World advocate of tikkun olam. "I never realized that what I was doing was `tremendous' to the rest of the world," says Rusesabagina. "It was my obligation to mankind."

Has he no reason to lament what man has made of man? Or, for that matter, how the United Nations manhandled the Rwanda situation? "I used to be very angry at the U.N. These days," he says, "I'm okay." Which does not mean approval of the past. "They didn't do what they were supposed to do."

But Rusesabagina only did what he thought he was supposed to do: Step in and save others, which, he insists, "is what any ordinary man would do." Resorting to extraordinary actions, the resort manager managed to herd history into a more humane corner. While the scope of his heroism is sensational, Rusesabagina telescopes history with a proper perspective. He will not compare what happened in Rwanda - as horrific as it was - to the Jewish genocide of World War II. "They lost 6 million; the scope is not the same," he acknowledges.

A million-to-one shot, this story of survival. But Rusesabagina, now a businessman who found refuge in Belgium after leaving Rwanda nine years ago, thinks the only number that won the war of survival is the one-to-one relationship forged between heart and conscience. "I believe in one thing," says the man who made a believer of many, "and that is that each and every person has good in him, and can do good for the world while he lives. "And if I die now, I die as a man, not as a coward." And forever as a hero.