Hero

(image: nydailynews.com)

Liviu Librescu
1929--2007

Hero.

Why him?

Not because he survived the Holocaust only to be murdered sixty years later, an old Jewish man in a peaceful Virginia town.

Not because he endured the oppression of life under Communism and escaped to become an anonymous American science professor.

No, simply because he did what no one else did, yesterday at Virginia Tech. Like FDNY firefighters six years ago, when everyone else was fleeing from from the danger, he made a decision. He ran the other way.

A dozen or more people are breathing right now only because he ran to hold the door shut so they could escape out the window. I hesitate to ask, and none of us can judge, but how many more could have been saved if someone else in the crowds - anyone - had just tackled the shooter and piled on, during one of his many pauses to reload?

Self-preservation is an overwhelmingly natural instinct. Fear is a powerful, disabling force. But to me, the thing about yesterday's 33 dead is this: They all died. They all knew it was coming. The difference between him and the rest is this: He died doing something about it.

They were all victims, he and the others. But his name is Liviu Librescu, and he is a hero.


--UPDATE, 4/18/07: Mark Steyn's opinion

--UPDATE, 4/19/07: The Daily Gut weighs in