When Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things

On this day, we choose to focus not on the evil person who murdered fellow human beings in cold blood. We don't care why he did it. We don't care that he was a loner. We don't care if he may have been on medication. In fact, the only thing we care about him is that he's dead. And we're glad he is.

Instead, we will highlight the story of man who died as he lived: courageously.

A 76-year-old professor who survived the Holocaust was shot to death while saving his students from the Virginia Tech assailant, students said.

Liviu Librescu, an internationally respected aeronautics engineer who taught at Virginia Tech for 20 years, saved the lives of several students by barricading his classroom door before he was gunned down in the massacre, according to e-mail accounts sent by students to his wife.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," his son, Joe Librescu, said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out." ...

"He should be recognized as a hero," Virginia Tech graduate student Philip Huffstetler said. "We should be in such great debt to his family for the rest of our lives."

Professor Librescu escaped Nazism. He escaped communism. In the end, he didn't escape a cowardly loser. But because of a 76-year-old man, many young people are alive today. Emerson once said, "A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer." But for the few moments the good professor held that door admire gunfire, his students jumped to safety. In those few moments, he taught them a lesson he will never hear them repeat -- but one they will never forget.

Rest in peace, Professor Librescu. You are a hero.



G-d bless.