Liviu Librescu

Blacksburg (Virginia), April 17 (Reuters): Amid the horror at Virginia Tech were tales of heroism during the rampage, including an older professor — himself a Holocaust survivor — who gave his life to protect his students.

Romanian-born Liviu Librescu, an Israeli citizen, moved two decades ago to the US where he taught in the Engineering Science and Mechanics Department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Although he was 76, long past the usual retirement age, he was still teaching at Virginia Tech yesterday when chaos erupted in Norris Hall, the campus building where a gunman identified as Cho Seung-Hui, 23, opened fire, killing 30 people people before committing suicide.

Students described how Librescu barricaded the door against Cho so that they could escape by jumping out the classroom’s second-floor window. Some broke legs in the fall, but they survived. Librescu was shot dead during the rampage. An impromptu shrine to the dead professor was set up on the campus, with flowers and his picture.

“He was an exceptionally tolerant man who mentored scholars from all over our troubled world,” Ishwar Puri, his department head, said in a written statement released to the media. Students who survived the massacre at Norris Hall spoke of school janitors who, as Cho opened fire upstairs, ran to help others instead of saving themselves.