Professor martyred himself to save classroom

Blacksburg: If you were lucky enough to have a choice, there were only two ways to go on the campus of Virginia Tech on Monday morning: away from danger or toward it.

Engineering professor Liviu Librescu chose the second option, saved a classroom full of students and became a hero - at the cost of his life.

As a child, he had survived the Holocaust. As an adult, he had survived persecution for defying Romania's brutal communist regime during the Cold War. At last, with their children grown, he and his wife, Marlena, seemed to have found a safe haven on a quiet university campus in rural Virginia. But Monday, trouble found him once more. With bursts of gunfire rattling through the second floor of Norris Hall, Librescu, 76, closed his classroom door and urged his students to escape out the windows, recalled senior Caroline Merrey of Baltimore, the third student to jump.

Moments later

As they fled, Librescu held the door shut with his body as the gunman, 23-year-old senior Cho Seung-Hui, tried to force his way in. Moments after the last student leapt to safety, Cho apparently succeeded in forcing the door open and shot Librescu to death.

"My father has showed a sense of his courage in standing up for what he believed since long ago," said Joe Librescu, the professor's son. Liviu Librescu's actions struck a chord around the world. "Just one candle can light up a room filled with darkness. Professor Librescu has lit the entire world with hope, reminding us that heroes can still exist even in our dark times," Evan Goldenthal of Toronto wrote on a Facebook.com page of tributes to the professor.

What Liviu Librescu did might be the most conspicuous act of heroism to surface thus far in the bloodiest massacre ever inflicted on an American campus by a lone gunman, but it was not the only story of bravery and determination in the face of mortal danger.

Elsewhere in the building, students fought off attempts by the gunman to force open the doors to their classrooms. In one case, Cho had shot as many as a dozen students in a German language class, then departed in search of new targets.