Faith & Community
Peerless
Félicité Niyitegeka
died 1994
Chose to die rather than hand over the forty-three people she was hiding
Peerless is level 1 of 4 in the Rwanda Hall of Fame: changed the field itself. Tell the country's story without them and the story breaks. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
Her brother was an army officer and offered to get her out. She wrote back: "I would rather die than abandon the 43 people I am responsible for." Two days later the militia killed her with them.
Félicité Niyitegeka was a Hutu lay sister who ran the Centre Saint-Pierre, a Catholic charity in Gisenyi on Lake Kivu, and who had spent decades giving food, clothing and money to her neighbours, Hutu and Tutsi alike.
During the genocide against the Tutsi she used her knowledge of the soldiers on the border to bribe them to look away while she moved people across, organising escapes in groups of ten and fifteen through the night of 19 April 1994. When her brother, an army officer, warned her that the military knew and urged her to separate herself from those she was hiding, she refused in writing: she would rather die than abandon the forty-three people in her care. She was killed on 21 April 1994, along with those she sheltered. She is honoured in Rwanda as a national hero.
During the genocide against the Tutsi she used her knowledge of the soldiers on the border to bribe them to look away while she moved people across, organising escapes in groups of ten and fifteen through the night of 19 April 1994. When her brother, an army officer, warned her that the military knew and urged her to separate herself from those she was hiding, she refused in writing: she would rather die than abandon the forty-three people in her care. She was killed on 21 April 1994, along with those she sheltered. She is honoured in Rwanda as a national hero.
- Wikipedia — Félicité Niyitegeka
- Gariwo — Félicité Niyitegeka
- Atlas Obscura — How Félicité Niyitegeka saved her Tutsi neighbours from genocide in Rwanda
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