Liviu Librescu was a Romanian Jew who survived the Holocaust, emigrated from Romania to Israel over the objections of the Communists, came to America to teach engineering, and gave his life saving his students from the crazed gunman yesterday. I checked his website over at Tech. His resume is 61 pages long. This was a man of accomplishment. This was a life lived to the fullest, up to the very moment of death.

JERUSALEM — The e-mails from grateful students arrived soon after Liviu Librescu was shot to death, telling how the Holocaust survivor barricaded the doorway of his Virginia Tech classroom and saved their lives at the cost of his own.

Librescu, an Israeli engineering and math lecturer who survived the Nazi killings and later escaped from Communist Romania, was one of several foreign victims of Monday’s shootings, which coincided with Israel’s Holocaust remembrance day.

“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Librescu’s son, Joe Librescu, said Tuesday in a telephone interview from his home outside Tel Aviv. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”

Joe Librescu, who studied at Virginia Tech from 1989 to 1994, said his mother received e-mails from students shortly after learning of her husband’s death.

That quote is from the latest story about Librescu. I’ve been following the story since this morning. But something gnawed at me through most of the day. The first mention of Librescu in the AP story this morning was missing one important detail that Ynet didn’t miss: That he was a survivor of the Holocaust. It was titled “Israeli Teacher Saved Lives in Shootings.” I found a copy that shouldn’t disappear into the ether the way MyWay AP articles do, from the LA Chronicle.” It shows the story this way at first:

Israeli Teacher Saved Lives in Shootings
JERUSALEM (AP) - The e-mails arrived soon after Marlena Librescu learned her husband had been shot to death - from students telling how he barricaded the doorway of his Virginia Tech classroom and saved their lives.

Liviu Librescu, an Israeli engineering and math lecturer, was one of several foreign victims of Monday’s shootings, which left 32 people dead, plus the gunman - South Korean national Cho Seung-Hui, 23.

“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Librescu’s son, Joe Librescu, said Tuesday in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”

Nowhere in the first AP story do you learn Librescu survived the Nazis.

A couple of hours later, the lede changed. and the information was added.

The e-mails from grateful students arrived soon after Liviu Librescu was shot to death, telling how the Holocaust survivor barricaded the doorway of his Virginia Tech classroom and saved their lives at the cost of his own.

Librescu, an Israeli engineering and math lecturer who survived the Nazi killings and later escaped from Communist Romania, was one of several foreign victims of Monday’s shootings, which coincided with Israel’s Holocaust remembrance day.

And then the story changed. And changed again.

Holocaust survivor saved students’ lives
The e-mails from grateful students arrived soon after Liviu Librescu was shot to death, telling how the Holocaust survivor barricaded the doorway of his Virginia Tech classroom and saved their lives at the cost of his own.

Librescu, an Israeli engineering and math lecturer who survived the Nazi killings and later escaped from Communist Romania, was one of several foreign victims of Monday’s shootings, which coincided with Israel’s Holocaust remembrance day.

“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Librescu’s son, Joe Librescu, said Tuesday in a telephone interview from his home outside Tel Aviv. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”

And finally, we have this version, with yet more changes:

Holocaust Survivor Killed in Va Shooting
Liviu Librescu survived the Nazi Holocaust. He died trying to keep a gunman from shooting his students in a killing spree at Virginia Tech - a heroic feat later recounted in e-mails from students to his wife.

Librescu, an aeronautics engineer and teacher at the school for 20 years, saved the lives of several students by using his body to barricade a classroom door before he was gunned down in Monday’s massacre, which coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day.

I don’t know exactly what to think about the various changes of this story throughout the day. I could comment on whether they are more positive or negative as time goes by, but you’re all smart enough to figure that out for yourselves. This is just the sort of thing that I pick up on, and the sort of thing you read my blog for.

I found the variances in this particular story to be—puzzling. Which is why I didn’t write about it all day.

But I found myself thinking: If Librescu is one of the Jews that Hitler missed, just imagine the kinds of men and women we lost. Just imagine the leaps in science and medicine and technology we didn’t make, because of Europe’s Jew-hatred. And today, I think, there are a few parents out there who are thanking God that Hitler missed Liviu Librescu. So should we all.

Iran accuses its Jewish community of spying for Israel whenever it feels like threatening its remaining few thousand Jews. Apparently, Iran actually is recruiting Iranian Jews who emigrated to Israel but who return to visit relatives. And by “recruiting” I mean “blackmailing them into spying for Iran.”

Over the past two years the Iran’s security servicies have made at least 10 attempts to recruit Israeli citizens of Persian descent visiting their relatives in Iran, Shin Bet sources said. By law, Iran is not defined an enemy state and Israeli citizens are permitted to travel there.

According to Shin Bet, Iranian intelligence officers try to recruit Israelis seeking entry permits to Iran at their Istanbul consulate. Permit applicants undergo extensive questioning in which Iranian officials test their political stance and other criteria.

Israelis deemed suitable for recruitment are then arrested by Iranian police when they arrive in Tehran and held for questioning. In some cases, Iranian authorities hold them for a number of months and threaten to hold them indefinitely unless they cooperate with Iranian intelligence services.

In the Reuters news report about this, they felt it necessary to add these words:

Iran is home to 25,000 Jews, who while subject to state scrutiny, seldom complain of serious persecution.

Iran arrested 13 Jewish citizens in 1999 and tried them for espionage in a case that drew international condemnation. Israel denied any links to the alleged cell, all of whose members were eventually released from prison.

Avi Yigay, an Israeli of Iranian descent who visited Iran last year, told Israel’s Army Radio that he had not experienced any pressure from the authorities in Tehran to switch sides.

“They received me very nicely. I wasn’t afraid,” Yigay said. “My passport has a five-year visa, so I can go back there without contacting anyone. I have family there. I may go back.”

In the first two paragraphs, Reuters manages to insist that even though Iranian Jews are being arrested for spying for Israel on false charges (they were all ultimately released), they don’t say they’re being persecuted. In the last two paragraphs, Reuters found an Iranian expat who was not recruited by the Iranians. There, you see? It’s all fiction, all overblown by the Israelis. And Reuters has the proof.

I just love how they will take the words of a captive population as proof they’re not being persecuted. Iranian Jews cannot emigrate. They are prisoners in Iran. But then, the news services are becoming very fond of uncritically reporting captives’ words. Look what they did regarding the British sailors’ propaganda videos and letters.

Good to know that Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Damascus accomplished something, hey? Yeah, that “road to peace runs through Damascus” bull really works.

“If Israel rejects the Arab League peace proposal, resistance will be the only way to liberate the Golan Heights,” warns Syrian Information Minister Muhsen Bilal, at a press conference in Damascus Monday.

The minister explained that Syria had an interest in renewing talks with Israel with support from America and Russia. “Syria wants to reach a fair, comprehensive peace,” he added. However, he also stated that “any nation living under occupation has the prerogative to resist. In Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, we must liberate all occupied Arab land.”

Bilal blamed Israel for causing instability in the Middle East.

Of course. Nothing about Syria supplying, supporting, and training terrorists, taking over Lebanon, murdering Lebanese democrats and journalists, sending weapons to Iraq to murder Americans, joining Iran in its quest to destroy Israel—nope, it’s all Israel’s fault, that instability.

But hey, at least Pelosi gave Assad a great photo-op.