heroism

I just read this in an AP article regarding the Virginia Tech shootings:

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.

Apparently Prof. Librescu's act allowed several students to jump out of a window, thus avoiding the gunman. That's just so tragically heroic, that I don't even know what to say.