Liviu Librescu: Survivor Of The Deportation To Transnistria

First of all I must express my horror at what happened at Virginia Tech, my sympathies to the families of those murdered, and a speedy recovery to the wounded.

Much has been written, in the MSM and in the blogosphere, about the massacre at Virginia Tech. The heroic exploits of Professor Liviu Librescu were lauded by many, and rightly so. The man obviously loved his students, and was willing to put his life on the line to save them. May his memory be a blessing.

Something that touched me personally was the fact that Prof. Librescu was a survivor of the deportation of the Jews of Besserabia and Bukovina to Transnistria:

When Romania joined forces with Nazi Germany in World War II, he was first interned at a labor camp in Transnistria and then deported along with his family and thousands of other Jews to a ghetto in the Romanian city of Focsani, his son said.

According to a report compiled by the Romanian government in 2004, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were killed by Romania's Nazi-allied regime during the war.

"We were in Romania during the Second World War, and we were Jews there among the Germans, and among the anti-Semitic Romanians," Marlena Librescu told Israeli Channel 10 TV on Tuesday.

In the winter of 1941-1942 my great grandparents were exiled from their home in Besserabia by "Romania's Nazi-allied regime" to Transnistria. They were never heard from again.

Everyone knows about Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto . The mass murder of Jews by the Romanians is not as well known. For more information see this web site.