Foehammer’s Anvil

As I happen to agree with every word of this next article, you can condemn me if you condemn Ms. Klinghoffer, but I’m so sick of hearing the name of Cho Seung-Hui that I had to post a few fitting references to the hero Liviu Librescu, the Jewish-Romanian lecturer who blocked the door to his classroom with his own body, sacrificing his life in the process in order to save the lives of as many of his students as he could. God bless him; he should be held up as an example for all.

I know I am going to get hate mail and I may be rushing to judgment. But it all seems to follow such a familiar pattern.
Once again, this time in a campus filled with young men and women military age, a lone bully seemed to have been able to go on a rampage without anyone trying to actively stop him. What did the students and faculty do? They either cowered behind furniture or locked their door. He, of course, went on to shoot the students next door. Once again, as Bill Bennet noted, heavily armed men were seen swarming OUTSIDE assessing the situation!

As this behavior took place on Holocaust memorial day, it is not surprising that the one man who said “Never again” was a 76 year old professor, a holocaust survivor. He did the best he could, blocked the door with his body and told his students to flee. Of course, it would have been better if had he told them to attack.

You think I am too harsh? believe it or not, But Mahatma Gandhi shared my view. Per chance, I as reading Mohandas yesterday and it included his response to the information that Hindu homes had been looted in Sharanpur in Western UP, an a housewife assaulted without the local Hindus putting up a fight. He emphasized that he was not asking Indians to respond with absolute non violence to villainy, or against “thieves, robbers or . . . nations that may invade India. He added:

As a Hindu I am more ashamed of Hindu couardice that I am angry at the Mussulman bullying. . . . Where there are cowards, there will always be bullies.”

Of course, standing up to bullies is no longer the expected even of trained fighters. How can one expect young people at a university to behave more courageously than British marines confronting Iranian bullies? We better. For as Gandhi expected, in the current atmosphere bullies are multiplying and the price of continuing to go as sheep to slaughter is getting higher and higher by the day.

You may find more information about Professor Librescu at his new Wikipedia entry. I was quite happy to find that, because the killer also has one of his own, of course. There is still a little balance left in the world when one of the good people is not forgotten while we have to weather the all-too-typical media frenzy surrounding the evil-doer.

Liviu Librescu was born in 1930 to a Jewish family in the city of Ploie?ti, Romania. During World War II, his family was interned in a labor camp in Transnistria and then transferred to the ghetto of Foc?ani. He survived the Holocaust to become an accomplished scientist in Romania.

Librescu studied Aerospace Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, graduating in 1952 and continuing with a master at the same university. He was awarded his Ph.D. in Fluid Mechanics in 1969 at the Academia de ?tiin?e din România.

From 1953 to 1975 he worked as a researcher at Institute of Applied Mechanics, Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Aerospace Constructions of Academy of Science of Romania.

Under the Romanian communist regime at the time, he was unable to move to Israel (make aliyah). Eventually, the government permitted him to leave, but only after a direct request was made by the Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin to President of Romania Nicolae Ceau?escu.

Librescu emigrated to Israel in 1978. From 1979 to 1986 he was Professor of Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering at Tel-Aviv University.

From 1985 until his death, he served as Professor at Virginia Tech. Librescu received many academic honors during his work at Virginia Tech, serving as chair or invited as a keynote speaker of several International Congresses on Thermal Stresses and receiving several honorary degrees. He was elected member of the Academy of Sciences of the Shipbuilding of Ukraine and Foreign Fellow of the Academy of Engineering of Armenia. He served as a member on the editorial board of seven scientific journals and was invited as a guest editor of special issues of five other journals. According to his wife, no other Virginia Tech professor has ever published more articles than Librescu.

Librescu is survived by his wife, Marilena (née Semian), and his sons Joseph and Lionel.

We can not let evil be the center of our world, nor allow great deeds to be forgotten. R.I.P, Professor Librescu.