if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
Liviu Librescu, RIP
by Lee
This is a hero.
A 76-year-old lecturer shot to death trying to save his students from the Virginia Tech assailant was a Holocaust survivor who later escaped to Israel from Communist Romania, his son said Tuesday.
Relatives said Liviu Librescu, an internationally respected aeronautics engineer and a lecturer at the school for 20 years, saved the lives of several students by barricading his classroom door before he was gunned down in Monday’s massacre, which coincided with Israel’s Holocaust remembrance day.
Librescu’ students sent e-mails recounting the last moments of their teacher’s life to his wife, Marlena, his son, Joe, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
“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.”
This is a man who knew the face of evil.
When Romania joined forces with Nazi Germany in World War II, he was first interned in a labor camp in Transnistria and then deported along with his family and thousands of other Jews to a central ghetto in the city of Focsani, his son said. 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.
I can’t close this post better than this.
Professor Nicolae Serban Tomescu described Librescu as “strong and dignified.”
“He had a huge affection for his students and he sacrificed his life for them,” Tomescu told AP Television News.
Stong and dignified. Liviu Librescu, RIP.
Comments
A true hero.
I was really angered to see a post on Townhall where they characterised it as if the students ‘abandoned their lecturer while he tried to block the door’, talk about dishonouring the sacrifice this guy chose to make…
Reading this story brought tears to me eyes. Amazing how some people can act in the face of it.
He certainly was a hero. What an unbelievable life for one person to live.
I’d also like to give recognition to the Canadian teacher who was killed and who’s class suffered the most casualties, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak.
Lee,
I saw this story on a few other websites where people were saying that none of this ever happened. Funny how quick scum can’t wait to disparage the Joooooooooo professor.
I am very proud of what he did. I am sure his family is as well. May God Bless his soul.
God… surviving the holocaust just to end like this.
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There’s a movement on to get him awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously (there are also equivalent Congressional medals). We should all be campaigning for that. True, the award has been degraded somewhat now that Bush hands it out to political hacks. But it would still be a fitting recognition of his heroism.
Let’s stop celebrating the monster. Let’s remember the heros!