Like most Americans, I am sick over yesterday’s events in Blacksburg, VA. I am also sickened by the constant parade of talking heads weighing in on what happened, why it happened, and what we need to do about it. Rather than go on and on about the bad guy with a firearm, I’d like to bring one of the heroes to your attention. I have not found out much about Liviu Librescu on the internet yet, but I’m sure more details will emerge as the story gets around. After all, everyone loves a hero.

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that one of the victims of yesterday’s attack was an Israeli professor. From the Jerusalem Post:

Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter when the [murderer] attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, “but all the students lived–because of him,” Virginia Tech student Asael Arad–also an Israeli–told Army Radio.

Several of Librescu’s other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he had blocked the gunman’s way and saved their lives, said Librescu’s 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.”

James Taranto, in The Best of the Web Today, reports that “Librescu was a Holocaust survivor who escaped communist Romania for Israel in 1978 and moved to Virginia in 1986. By coincidence, he was murdered on Holocaust Remembrance Day.”

Amazing.

I wonder if ever a day went by that he didn’t recall the horrors he witnessed during the Holocaust. I wonder if he thought about it that morning, being that it was Remembrance Day. I didn’t know it was Holocaust Remembrance Day. I’d wager that most, if not all, of his students didn’t know it was Holocaust Remembrance Day either. But they will always remember the horror of April 16, 2007 and the day their lives were spared because of Dr. Librescu.