Heroes in the Midst of Horror: Holocaust Survivor, Students Saved Others

April 17, 2007 — -- An elderly professor and two students at Virginia Tech are being hailed as heroes today for helping to stop the gunman from killing more people during yesterday's rampage.

Liviu Librescu, a 75-year-old Holocaust survivor and professor of mechanical engineering, Zach Petkewicz, a senior, and Derek O'Dell, a 20-year-old sophomore all blocked the gunman from entering their classrooms at Virginia Tech's Norris Hall during yesterday's rampage.

Friends and family of Librescu weren't surprised to learn that he was a hero and helped save his students' lives during the shooting massacre by Seung-Hui Cho.

The 75-year-old professor and Holocaust survivor was in the middle of teaching one of his popular classes at Norris Hall yesterday when Cho tried to enter the room. As his students start jumping out the windows of the second-floor room, Librescu stayed behind to block the door, according to his students. He was killed by the gunman.

Librescu's son, Joe, says that knowing his father died fighting the assailant makes the loss easier to swallow. "Basically, he died in the line of his duty, in the line of his duty that he loved the most, being a professor and a researcher," he told ABC News Radio. "He gave his life."

The son is heading to the United States tonight to escort his father's remains back for burial in Israel.

"He had internal strength, he was a strong man," remembers Librescu. "He had a fire in him — he was not very tall but he was hard, he was hard."

Soon after Librescu's class heard a "thunderous sound" from a classroom next door, some of the students, including Alec Calhou, started jumping out of the classroom windows. Right before he leapt, Calhoun told The Associated Press, he turned around and saw Librescu attempting to block the door.

Librescu, who died on the same day that Israel marked Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day, escaped the Holocaust.

More than 25 years ago, he emigrated from then-communist Romania to Israel, smuggling out a book about his life in that country. Israel's then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin personally intervened to get Librescu and his family an emigration permit, according to his son. He moved to the United States in 1986 and soon started working as a teacher at Virginia Tech's Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics.