Virginia Tech Lecturer Who Saved Students Buried in Israel

Liviu Librescu, who survived the Holocaust only to be gunned down trying to save his students from the Virginia Tech assailant, was buried Friday in Israel to the sobs of his grieving family and with his native Romania's highest honour.

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.

Georgi Angelescu, a representative of the Romanian government, awarded Librescu Romania's highest medal for his scientific accomplishments and heroism. Romanian officials laid a wreath at the grave.

A child in Nazi-allied Romania during Second World War, Librescu was deported along with his family to a labour camp in Transnistria (NOTE: my mother was also deported from Romania to Transistria) and then 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 the Romanian regime during the war.

Librescu later worked as an engineer at Romania's aerospace agency under the post-war Communist government, but his career was stymied in the 1970s because he refused to swear allegiance to the regime. He was later fired when he requested permission to move to Israel.
After years of government refusal, according to his son, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin personally intervened to get the family emigration permits. They moved to Israel in 1978.