GITARAMA, Rwanda (CNN) -- What does Macy's have to do with healing from genocide? Nothing and everything.





Iphigenia Mukantabana sits with Jean-Bosco Bizimana, her family's killer, at her home after church.





Fourteen years after Hutu extremists killed between 800,000 and 1 million people -- mostly Tutsis -- in a devastating slaughter, Rwandan women are weaving peace baskets for sale at Macy's in the United States. Not only does the work bring them a regular salary, the business is also fostering reconciliation between victim and perpetrator.





Iphigenia Mukantabana, a master weaver, sits in front of her house in Gitarama -- an hour from the capital, Kigali -- making beautiful baskets with her friend Epiphania Mukanyndwi.





In 1994, Mukantabana's husband and five of her children were hacked and clubbed to death by marauding Hutu militias. Among her family's killers was Jean-Bosco Bizimana, Mukanyndwi's husband.





"In my heart, the dead are dead, and they cannot come back again," Mukantabana said of those she lost. "So I have to get on with the others and forget what has happened."





Forgetting and forgiving everything she lost, everything she witnessed.





"Women and girls were raped, and I saw it all," she told CNN. "The men and boys were beaten and then slaughtered. They told others to dig a hole, get in, then they piled earth on top of them, while they were still alive."  Watch Mukantabana say how she survived »





Yet today, Mukantabana shares her future and her family meals with Bizimana, the killer she knew, and his wife, her friend Mukanyndwi.





Bizimana did spend seven years in jail. He then went before a tribal gathering, part of a return to traditional ways by the new government in 2002 with Rwanda's justice system unable to cope and process hundreds of thousands of imprisoned perpetrators.





The government decided that the master planners and worst perpetrators would face formal justice. But lower-level killers were allowed to publicly confess and apologize to the families of their victims at gacaca courts, where elders would hear grievances and decide on the punishments.





"In the gacaca court, I told them how we killed our fellow men, and I asked for forgiveness in front of the court, and the whole district was there," Bizimana said.





"The people who died in this very area -- I knew all of them because they were our neighbors."  Watch Bizimana describe how he killed Tutsis »





He places blame squarely on the extremist Hutu government at the time and on vile radio broadcasts that urged on the killers during the 100-day slaughter.





"They were giving instructions all the time that was from the government, and so we thought it as the right thing because we were getting this instruction from the government," Bizimana said.





He showed where he and a Hutu mob had killed 25 people, including members of Mukantabana's family, a few yards from where he had just shared lunch with her. "We used machetes, hoes and wooden clubs," he told CNN.





Mukantabana admits that it was difficult to forgive. She said she did not speak to Bizimana or his wife for four years after the killings. What put her on the road to healing, she said, was the gacaca process.





"It has not just helped me, it has helped all Rwandans because someone comes and accepts what he did and he asks for forgiveness from the whole community, from all Rwandans," she said.





Bizimana said he did just that.





"You go in front of the people like we are standing here and ask for forgiveness," he said.





But despite his confession and apology, Mukantabana said, reconciliation would not have happened unless she had decided to open her heart and accept his pleas.





"I am a Christian, and I pray a lot," she said, the pain etched in the lines on her face and around her sad eyes.





But the basket business also played a key role in forging forgiveness and reconciliation after
What year was the genocide? Where did the genocide take place? Who were hacked and clubbed to death? How many children were hacked and clubbed to death? what happened to the five children
1994, Rwanda five of her children five were hacked and clubbed to death
question: What year was the genocide?, answer: 1994, | question: Where did the genocide take place?, answer: Rwanda | question: Who were hacked and clubbed to death?, answer: five of her children | question: How many children were hacked and clubbed to death?, answer: five | question: what happened to the five children, answer: were hacked and clubbed to death