KIGALI, July 4 -- Claudette Kamikazi runs a souvenir shop in the capital. Her father has been in prison for most of her life, convicted of genocide crimes. She was born three years after the killing stopped, which means she has lived her entire conscious existence in a country that is simultaneously her home and the site of a crime her family is part of.

"Liberation means survival for my mother," Kamikazi, 29, said. "It means my life. But it also reminds me why my father is where he is."

July 4 is Liberation Day in Rwanda, the anniversary of the moment in 1994 when the Rwandan Patriotic Front ended the genocide that had killed approximately 800,000 people in one hundred days. Thirty-two years later, Rwanda has built something remarkable...