Liviu Librescu - Virginia Tech Hero, Victim

Liviu Librescu was a Romanian-born aeronautical engineer who died in Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Librescu, an engineering and math professor at the school for over 20 years, saved the lives of students by using his body to barricade a classroom door before he was murdered. His son, Joe Librescu, told reporters on Tuesday that his mother, Marlena Librescu, received e-mails from students shortly after learning of her husband's death. "My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," said Joe Librescu. "Students started opening windows and jumping out." , student Richard Mallalieu told the police, "I don't think my teacher got out."

The heroism of Liviu Librescu was the final act in the life of a man who resisted brutality across two centuries. The 76-year old Holocaust survivor was born in Romania in 1931, eight years before the Nazi invasion of Poland that ignited World War II. When Librescu was a boy, Romania allied itself with Nazi Germany and subjected Jewish families such as Librescu's to the cruelties of anti-Semitism. During World War II, Liviu Librescu was imprisoned at a labor camp in Transnistria and then deported along with his family and thousands of other Jews to a ghetto in the Romanian city of Focsani. According to a report compiled by the Romanian government in 2004, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were killed by Romania's Nazi-allied regime.

In the aftermath of World War II, Liviu Librescu was trapped behind the Iron Curtain that descended over Eastern Europe. In 1953, he earned an M.S. in aeronautical engineering from Bucharest's Polytechnic University. He then secured a position with Romania's state-run aerospace agency, where he studied aeroelasticity and unsteady aerodynamics. In 1969, Librescu earned a Ph.D. in fluid mechanics from the Academy of Sciences of Romania. The 1975 publication of "Elastostatics and kinetics of anisotropic and heterogeneous shell-type structures" marked a high-point in Librescu's career; however, he was ultimately punished when he refused to swear allegiance to Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

During the 1970s, Liviu Librescu requested permission to move to Israel, an act of defiance which cost him his job. After enduring years of government refusals, he finally received permission to leave Romania in 1978. In Israel, Librescu served as Professor of Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering at Tel Aviv University and the Haifa Technion. In 1984, he traveled to Virginia, where he planned to spend a one-year sabbatical but instead built a new life.

As a professor at Virginia Tech, Liviu Librescu published over 1000 papers and received numerous awards for his work. He served as a member on the editorial board of 7 scientific journals and was invited as a guest editor of special issues of five other journals. His publications include "Random Vibration and Reliability of Composite Structures", "Thin-Walled Composite Beams: Theory and Application", and "Non-Classical Problems of the Theory and Behavior of Structures Exposed to Complex Environmental Conditions". Professor Nicolae Serban Tomescu, a former colleague, remembers Librescu as "strong and dignified" with "a huge affection for his students".

"His work", explains Joe Librescu, "was his life".

Resources:

http://o.canada.com/

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/104-3727945-7432724?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=librescu&Go.x=15&Go.y=7

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liviu_Librescu