Thread: A Hero

BLACKSBURG (Wires, Tiraspol Times) - Liviu Librescu, a Romanian-born Israeli professor, survived the killing fields of Transnistria as a teenager but fell to the bullet of a lone gunman in an American university campus Tuesday.

The 76 year-old Holocaust survivor was shot and killed in the Virginia Tech massacre while holding off the gunman at his lecture hall entrance so his students could escape.

Librescu was among the thirty-three people who were murdered in the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007. He was killed during a class in the Norris Hall Engineering Building by a student, Korean-born Cho Seung-hui, 23.

At Virginia Tech, his recent position was Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics.

Librescu held the door of his classroom shut while Cho was attempting to enter it; although he was shot through the door, he was able to prevent the gunman from entering the classroom until his students had escaped through the windows.


The Virginia Tech campus where Librescu taught when he was killed (file photo).
A hero to his students
A number of Librescu's students have called him a hero because of his actions, with one student, Asael Arad, saying that all the professor's students "lived because of him".

Librescu's son, Joe, said he had received e-mails from several students who said he had saved their lives and regarded him as a hero.

His death came on Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel.

Liviu Librescu was born in 1930 to a Jewish family in the city of Ploieşti, Romania. During World War II, his native Romania joined forces with Nazi Germany and started an extermination campaign of Jews.
His family was first interned in a labor camp in what the Romanians at the time called Transnistria and then transferred to the ghetto of Focşani.

According to a report compiled by the Romanian government in 2004, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were killed by Romania's Nazi-allied regime during the war. Others put the number higher, pointing to Romanian attempts to whitewash the scope of the crimes it committed while it occupied Transnistria (today known by its official name, Pridnestrovie, or by English names such as Transdniester and Transdniestria).

Anti-Semitic Romanians
" - 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.

From 1941 to 1944, Romania invaded occupied Transnistria (Pridnestrovie) which was a territory outside its own natural ethnic and historical borders. At no time in history was this territory ever part of Romania or of any independent Moldovan state, having also been majority Slavic and a traditional part of Russia or Ukraine.

During the Romanian occupation, the area was used as a giant slaughter house of Jews. At no time did Romania ever attempt to formally incorporate the territory into any Romanian or Moldovan state, recognizing that the natural border had always been the Dniester River; today the border between Pridnestrovie and Moldova.

Liviu Librescu survived the Holocaust to become an accomplished scientist in Romania.

He left the Romanian communist regime in 1978 after a direct request was made by the Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, to President of Romania, Communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu.

After emigrating to Israel, from 1979 to 1985 Librescu was Professor of Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering at Tel-Aviv University. From 1985 until his death, he served as Professor at Virginia Tech. (With information from AP, Wikipedia)

That is an American hero Lie Exposer... if you read this. He doesn't have to be an American. He just has to save lives.

There goes a hard, hard man who lived a fuck of a life and went out with as much class as any human being I know.

We should all be so blessed.

Thanks for posting that BB.
The term hero is thrown around pretty loosley & it's great when there's a real hero to celebrate & recognize.

Sadly we dont see as many of his ilk anymore. Such class, dignity and personal responsibility are rare in this day and age.

Bravo, bravo.

Originally Posted by lakeman

Bravo, bravo.

Sounds morbid. Applause for a death. But I understand what you mean. Hard to the core. He lived a life that should made him famous, almost a celebrity. Yet unlike one, he values others lives before his. Should Brad Pitt and a complete stranger be put at gun point, I'm pretty sure he'd pull the other man in front of himself.

(Brad Pitt is merely an example. I don't know what he would really do.)

Originally Posted by Left

Sounds morbid. Applause for a death. But I understand what you mean. Hard to the core. He lived a life that should made him famous, almost a celebrity. Yet unlike one, he values others lives before his. Should Brad Pitt and a complete stranger be put at gun point, I'm pretty sure he'd pull the other man in front of himself.

(Brad Pitt is merely an example. I don't know what he would really do.)

Well played and cognizant decision by this man.

Originally Posted by Chin

Well played and cognizant decision by this man.

Yes. He avoided falling into the same self-centeredness of the typical respected man. We gave him room do grow an ego. And being a good man, he did not.

Originally Posted by Left

Sounds morbid. Applause for a death. But I understand what you mean. Hard to the core. He lived a life that should made him famous, almost a celebrity. Yet unlike one, he values others lives before his. Should Brad Pitt and a complete stranger be put at gun point, I'm pretty sure he'd pull the other man in front of himself.

(Brad Pitt is merely an example. I don't know what he would really do.)

It was applause for his life. And I second it.