Saturday, April 21, 2007
Liviu Librescu
From the New York Times:
A Holocaust survivor gunned down trying to save his students from the Virginia Tech shooting rampage was buried in Israel Friday to the sobs of his grieving family.
Engineering Professor Liviu Librescu's body was wrapped in a prayer shawl according to Jewish tradition, and his two sons intoned the Kaddish, the Hebrew prayer for the dead.
A representative of the Romanian government posthumously awarded the Romanian-born Librescu the country's highest medal for his scientific accomplishments and heroism. Romanian officials laid a wreath at the grave.
''I walked through the streets today with my head held high because I have such a father,'' his elder son, Joe, said.
Librescu, a 76-year-old aeronautics engineer and lecturer at the school for 20 years, died trying to barricade the door of his Virginia Tech classroom to keep the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, away from his students.
