Prof slain shielding his students

Philadelphia Daily News, April, 2007 by JULIE SHAW shawj@phillynews.com 215-854-2592

VIRGINIA TECH professor Liviu Librescu shielded the people he cared about when the world's madness erupted around him.

On Monday, the engineering science and mechanics professor reportedly blocked the doorway to his classroom trying to save his students from the rampage of an enraged student gunman.

Many years earlier, a young Librescu had protected his mother during the Holocaust when his father was sent to a labor camp in their home country of Romania, Librescu's son Lionel said by phone from Israel yesterday.

"My dad was all alone hiding and trying to feed the family," Lionel said of his father, an only child in a Jewish family. "He was around 10, 11 or 12. He was mostly taking care of his mother. He was pretty much alone."

A Holocaust survivor, Librescu, 76, died Monday after student Cho Seung-Hui, 23, shot him and ...