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Liviu Librescu. Amazing

Article from Tom Head,
Your Guide to Civil Liberties.

Liviu Librescu: Holocaust Survivor and Hero of the Virginia Tech Massacre

Yesterday, April 16th, 2007, gave us the deadliest spree killing in U.S. history. Some in the political world have already begun to call for policy changes in response to the shooting. Most of these suggested changes have obvious civil liberties implications, and I will have more to say about them later today and over the coming week.

But there is a story that has come out of the shooting that is, I feel, more immediately pertinent. It is the story of Liviu Librescu, a 76-year-old Romanian-American Holocaust survivor:

The e-mails from grateful students arrived soon after Liviu Librescu was shot to death, telling how the Holocaust survivor barricaded the doorway of his Virginia Tech classroom and saved their lives at the cost of his own ...

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

"Holocaust survivor dies on Holocaust Remembrance Day" would have been a tragic and ironic headline. But for a Holocaust survivor to voluntarily give up his own life on Holocaust Remembrance Day to save the lives of others, during the worst spree shooting in American history, is deeply poignant. It is a connection between the past and the future--a reminder of the countless heroes of the Holocaust, whose stories for the most part will never be told, who gave up their lives to save the lives of others. Perhaps a child named Liviu Librescu survived the Holocaust, in part, because someone made such a decision. We may never know.

When Israel created Holocaust Remembrance Day in 1951, it was intended to commemorate both the Holocaust and the Warsaw uprising--in which Jewish residents of the Warsaw ghetto successfully resisted Nazi deportation for 27 days. The day commemorates the tragedy of the Holocaust, certainly, but it also commemorates the courage of those who attempted to resist it. As we look back on April 16th, 2007--and we undoubtedly will--we should see to it that the name of Liviu Librescu is remembered more clearly, and with far greater reverence, than the name of the pathetic Virginia Tech shooter.
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I won't post anything about scumbag murderers in my blog. I hope that we all can remember Professor Librescu for a long time.

Thanks for the email about this.

Posted by debutaunt at April 17, 2007 11:55 PM