Professor and Holocaust survivor died saving his students in VT
shooting
JERUSALEM An Israeli lecturer who died in the massacre at a U.S.
university saved the lives of several students by blocking the
doorway of his classroom from the approaching gunman before he was
fatally shot, his son said Tuesday.
Students of Liviu Librescu, 76, a holocaust survivor who was an
engineering science and mathematics lecturer at Virginia Tech for
20 years, sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he
blocked the gunman's way and saved their lives, said the son,
Joe.
"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."
Liviu Librescu, was respected in his field, his son said.
"His work was his life in a sense," Joe Librescu said. "That was a
good place for him to practice his research."
The couple immigrated to Israel from Romania in 1978 and then moved
to Virginia in 1985 for his sabbatical, but had stayed since then,
said Joe Librescu, who himself studied at the school from 1989 to
1994.
In Romania, the academic community also was mourning Librescu's
death.
"It is a great loss," said Ecaterina Andronescu, rector of the
Polytechnic University in Bucharest, where Librescu graduated in
mechanics and aviation construction in 1953. "We have immense
consideration for the way he reacted and defended his students with
his life."
He also received a Ph.D from the Bucharest-based Academy of
Sciences in 1969, and received an honorary degree with the
Polytechnic University in 2000.
At the Polytechnic University, his picture was put on a table and a
candle was lit, and people lay flowers. "We remember him as a great
specialist in aeronautics. He left behind hundreds of prestigious
papers," said one of the professors, Nicolae Serban Tomescu.
Librescu, who specialized in composite structures and
aeroelasticity, published extensively and received numerous awards
for his work. He also received several NASA grants and also taught
courses at the University "La Sapienza" of Rome, Italy, and at the
Tel Aviv University in Israel.
In Monday's massacre, a gunman killed 32 people at the Virginia
university before committing suicide. It was the deadliest shooting
rampage in modern U.S. history.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266506,00.html
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RIP to all who passed away.. 
