In 1994 a wave of mass killings swept through the small country of Rwanda—Hutu extremists orchestrating a campaign of extermination against Tutsis. But an unknown number of Hutu civilians resisted demands by the state military and local militias to deliver Tutsis over for the slaughter. These Hutus secretly offered Tutsis safe haven, material assistance, and emotional comfort. Why did some Hutus find the anti-Tutsi propaganda spurious, while a majority of Hutus accepted the messages of hatred and fear as truth? Why did some Hutus put their own lives on the line to save Tutsis? Addressing these questions, we examined the motives and conscious reasons for a select group of Hutus who sought to rescue Tutsis. We drew upon the testimony of thirty-three self-identifying rescuers who were interviewed in Rwanda between July and August of 2010. For the purpose of this paper we rely on this methodology for officially recognizing rescuers, which depends heavily on the narrative and interpretative accounts of the rescuers’ memory of such events. In section 1 we provide a broader historical context for rescuing under conditions of genocidal violence with a summary of the rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. Then in section 2 we examine the Hutus’ rescue efforts in Rwanda, defining such efforts in three distinct stages. In section 3 we present our findings about the motivations of the Hutu rescuers, with special emphasis on the role models that influenced their sense of self in relation to others. These motivations are then examined in section 4, specifically in relation to how the lessons the rescuers learned from their role models motivated their efforts to save Tutsis, acting out of compassion while knowingly placing themselves in mortal danger. We conclude in section 5 with summary observations about the rescuers’ sense of moral conviction drawn from the lessons they learned from their experiences during the genocidal violence.