Virginia Tech hero buried
2007-04-20 16:12
Ra'anana - A 76-year-old Jewish professor who protected about 20 students in Monday's US school shooting was buried in Israel on Friday.
Dozens of people gathered at the Ra'anana cemetery in the centre of the country to pay their last respects to Liviu Librescu, a Romanian Holocaust survivor who migrated to Israel in 1978 before moving to the United States.
Family members, friends and rabbis eulogised Lubrescu before his body was lowered into the grave.
"My years are now open to your legacy... to do the best I can to live," his son, Joe Librescu, said before ending with "goodbye, father".
In the aftermath of Monday's shooting, Librescu was hailed as a hero for holding the gunman at bay by blocking a classroom door while students escaped through a window.
Librescu became a senior researcher and mathematics lecturer at Virginia Tech University where he taught for 20 years.
Thirty-two teachers and students were left dead after Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a Virginia Tech senior, went on the rampage with two recently bought handguns.
It later emerged he had been identified as mentally ill.
- SAPA