kaorder1999
04-18-2007, 10:19 AM
Professor a hero to the end
Holocaust survivor kept door closed so students could flee through windows
12:08 AM CDT on Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Associated Press
JERUSALEM – Liviu Librescu survived the Nazi Holocaust. He died trying to keep a gunman from shooting his students in a killing spree at Virginia Tech – a heroic feat later recounted in e-mails from students to his wife.
Dr. Librescu, an aeronautics engineer and teacher at the school for 20 years, saved the lives of several students by using his body to barricade a classroom door before he was gunned down in Monday's massacre, which coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day.
His son, Joe Librescu, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that his mother received e-mails from students shortly after learning of her husband's death.
"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."
Joe Librescu told CNN that one of the e-mails was from the last student left in the room. The student said he looked back and saw his teacher struggling to hold the door, and "he was torn between jumping out the window and coming and helping my dad."
"He chose, and possibly made the right decision, to jump out the window," the son said.
Dr. Librescu, 76, had known hardship since his childhood.
When Romania joined forces with Nazi Germany in World War II, he was first interned at a labor camp in Transnistria and then deported along with his family and thousands of other Jews to a ghetto in the Romanian city of Focsani, his son said.
According to a report compiled by the Romanian government in 2004, 280,000 to 380,000 Jews were killed by Romania's Nazi-allied regime during the war.
"We were in Romania during the second World War, and we were Jews there among the Germans, and among the anti-Semitic Romanians," Marlena Librescu told Israeli Channel 10 TV on Tuesday.
The Librescus tried to immigrate to Israel in the '70s, and after years of being stymied they finally succeeded in 1978.
Mr. Librescu left Israel for Virginia in 1985 for a year's sabbatical, but eventually the family made the move permanent, said his son, who himself studied at Virginia Tech from 1989 to 1994.
The professor was mourned in Romania on Tuesday.
"It is a great loss," said Ecaterina Andronescu, rector of the Polytechnic University in Bucharest, where Dr. Librescu graduated in 1953.
At the Romanian university, his picture was placed on a table and a candle was lit. People laid flowers nearby.
Holocaust survivor kept door closed so students could flee through windows
12:08 AM CDT on Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Associated Press
JERUSALEM – Liviu Librescu survived the Nazi Holocaust. He died trying to keep a gunman from shooting his students in a killing spree at Virginia Tech – a heroic feat later recounted in e-mails from students to his wife.
Dr. Librescu, an aeronautics engineer and teacher at the school for 20 years, saved the lives of several students by using his body to barricade a classroom door before he was gunned down in Monday's massacre, which coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day.
His son, Joe Librescu, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that his mother received e-mails from students shortly after learning of her husband's death.
"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."
Joe Librescu told CNN that one of the e-mails was from the last student left in the room. The student said he looked back and saw his teacher struggling to hold the door, and "he was torn between jumping out the window and coming and helping my dad."
"He chose, and possibly made the right decision, to jump out the window," the son said.
Dr. Librescu, 76, had known hardship since his childhood.
When Romania joined forces with Nazi Germany in World War II, he was first interned at a labor camp in Transnistria and then deported along with his family and thousands of other Jews to a ghetto in the Romanian city of Focsani, his son said.
According to a report compiled by the Romanian government in 2004, 280,000 to 380,000 Jews were killed by Romania's Nazi-allied regime during the war.
"We were in Romania during the second World War, and we were Jews there among the Germans, and among the anti-Semitic Romanians," Marlena Librescu told Israeli Channel 10 TV on Tuesday.
The Librescus tried to immigrate to Israel in the '70s, and after years of being stymied they finally succeeded in 1978.
Mr. Librescu left Israel for Virginia in 1985 for a year's sabbatical, but eventually the family made the move permanent, said his son, who himself studied at Virginia Tech from 1989 to 1994.
The professor was mourned in Romania on Tuesday.
"It is a great loss," said Ecaterina Andronescu, rector of the Polytechnic University in Bucharest, where Dr. Librescu graduated in 1953.
At the Romanian university, his picture was placed on a table and a candle was lit. People laid flowers nearby.