Israel ? Liviu Librescu, the 76-year-old professor and Holocaust survivor killed as he tried to block the Virginia Tech gunman from entering his classroom, was laid to rest Friday among the fields and citrus groves outside the town Ra’Anana, praised as a hero who gave his life for his students.

“I will never know what went through your mind in those last moments,” said Librescu’s wife, Marlena, sobbing next to his body, which was wrapped in a Jewish prayer shawl. “I hope very much that wherever you are, you will watch over your family. I am left with only the good things from you, and the pain of losing my dearest friend.”

Relatives, friends and ordinary Israelis came to pay their respects to the engineering professor whose last act, which enabled his students to flee to safety, resounded well beyond his family’s private circle of grief.

President Bush paid tribute to Librescu in remarks Wednesday at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and at the funeral, a Romanian diplomat presented the professor’s widow with the country’s highest decoration. Librescu was a native of Romania and immigrated to Israel before moving to the U.S.