Deny this.
Ph.D., Fluid Mechanics, Academy of Sciences of Romania, 1969
M.S., Aeronautical Engineering, Polytechnic Institute, Bucharest, 1953
Holocaust survivor
Selfless human being
Dr Liviu Librescu 1930 -2007
“Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.”
April 19, 2007 at 3:20 am
I was going to post about it, but you always end up doing it better than I would anyway.
April 19, 2007 at 6:23 am
and…why did an old man have to sacrifice himself? What were all those young, fit students doing while this old man stood in the way for them?
Heroic, and fucking unnecessary, had a few students only had the cojones to jump on the gunman.
April 19, 2007 at 7:53 am
I don’t know, kg. None of them had guns, for one thing. Murray, remember our arguments about guns when we first met?
April 19, 2007 at 8:08 am
well, Alisa, even an expert gunman would have found it impossible to put down say, half a dozen guys who jumped him at close range.
April 19, 2007 at 8:37 am
No offense, but hindsight from far away is easy. Maybe you are different, but most people, unless they went through a special training program that prepared them for this kind of situation, simply freeze in shock. (Maybe this professor did not have any special training, either, but being a Holocaust survivor could well have made him different). And this is where the point about them being unarmed comes in, because if they were to be armed, it would be natural for them to also have gone through suitable training that prepared them for various situations that might require the use of their weapons. I am not saying a person has to be armed to rationally and relatively effectively cope with a threat like this, only that a weapon combined with relevant training makes coping much more effective.
April 19, 2007 at 8:54 am
agreed. It’s not so much hindsight though as a different cultural context–my generation was raised to deal with things, not wait for “the authorities” to save us.
April 19, 2007 at 9:14 am
US college students are trained to live in the learned helplessness of academia’s never-never land. Forceably resisting an aggressor would be some sort of phallo-centric patriarchal mysogenistic hegemonic horror that would have branded the resisting students as tools of BusHitler and Halliburton and put them on the potential rapist watchlists for the rest of their tenure in academia. Better to be shot.
The professor was a true hero.
April 19, 2007 at 9:48 am
lol! too right, krm
April 19, 2007 at 9:55 am
This is a memorial post about a brave man who sacrificed himself to save others not an open forum on who did what or who should have done what.
If you wouldn’t say it in front of his family at his funeral don’t say it here.
Time and a place people.
April 19, 2007 at 10:11 am
I’d say it in front of his family–it’s a waste of a brave man, who sacrificed his life for those without the self-respect to defend themselves.
I visited Buchenwald as a young man and spoke to a guide there who was passionate in his belief of “never again”.
This man learned that lesson. When will the students?
It’s not at all disrespectful of his memory to ask what went wrong–as an engineer I’m sure he’d be asking the same question.
April 19, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Mark Steyn has something to say on this matter: A Culture of Passivity
April 19, 2007 at 12:46 pm
I posted that on CR, andrei. He’s spot-on, as usual.
April 19, 2007 at 1:29 pm
There seems to be a fundamental failure to grasp the nature of this post.
It is a memorial post for Dr Librescu.
It is not an invitation to share your opinions about peripheral events and to second guess like its a fucking football game round up. If you have something appropriate and respectful to say in relation to Dr Librescu then this is the place to do it.
Otherwise do not comment.
I should not have to remind long time readers that memorial posts have a zero tolerance policy. Any further off topic comments and commentary will be removed.
You all know that my patience is as abundant as unicorn shit so if in doubt don’t test me.
April 19, 2007 at 1:29 pm
The gang at Castle Arrgh had it right: You can not expect the sheep to run to the sound of the guns. That one old sheepdog stood between the wolf and the flock says more about him than a volume of accolades.
April 19, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Murray, I very much appreciate your words. For all we know some tried rushing Cho and were shot and killed, but there were no surviving witnesses or CNN cameras rolling. Those who rushed the terrorists on the plane on 911 were able to confer with each other and plan an attack. Not the same situation in Blacksburg.
Being Jewish, I’m proud of Dr. Librescu in an ethnic-pride sort of way; but I doubt he would
want to be praised while his slain students were spoken ill of.
Ten years ago I was a professor at Virginia Tech. My wife has a brief blog post about our time there here: http://lifeatfullvolume.blogspot.com/2007/04/heartache.html
April 19, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Well put Murray.
April 22, 2007 at 8:09 am
Great title to your post, Murray.
As the killer approached, Professor Librescu would have had three choices - stay where he was and let himself and his students be shot, try to escape with them through the windows and probably still be shot along with some of them or block the killer’s entry to give them time to escape. I’m sure the first two choices would not have even occurred to him and he certainly would not have endangered his students by calling on them to help him with the gunman. They were under his guidance and his protection and in fact the choice he made was the only one he could have made that was consistent with the kind of person we now know he was.
At the professor’s funeral on Friday morning in Israel, the adviser to the Romanian president presented his widow with the Grand Cross of Romania - the country’s highest civilian honour. No doubt his widow and his sons will bear their grief a little easier knowing he died a hero saving the lives of others.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152841184&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
There was another brave and quick-thinking action that day by a female student who peeped out into the corridor on hearing the shooting and saw the killer approaching. The students in that class were able to barricade the door with a desk and all survived.
The media should have dwelt more on these inspiring stories rather than giving the killer his posthumous moment of fame by screening his video and thereby encouraging copycat killings. But that’s the MSM.
April 23, 2007 at 4:36 am
All I can say is thank G-d for him and people like him.