The small but cohesive Jewish community at Virginia Tech was rocked by Monday's massacre, which not only claimed the life of a Holocaust survivor, but shattered what the mother of one Washington-area Jewish student called a "utopian, idyllic existence" for everyone on campus.

Among the 32 fatalities in the killing spree was Liviu Librescu, 76, a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor and professor in the engineering science and mechanics department.

Librescu, who made aliyah to Israel in 1978, was killed on Yom Hashoah, the international day of remembrance for victims of the Holocaust. He reportedly was shot while blocking a classroom door in order to protect his students.

Librescu, who is survived by his wife, Marlina, and two sons, Arieh and Joe, was scheduled to be buried in Israel. He had been at Virginia Tech since 1986, when he came on sabbatical and decided to make it his home.

"This tragedy couldn't have happened in a less likely place," said Falls Church resident Ellen Portnoy, a member of Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, whose daughter, Juliana, is a junior at Virginia Tech. "What a wonderful, supportive community they have. The students were happy and proud to be there. My daughter has loved being there, and I hope she will love being there again."

Juliana Portnoy, who is scheduled to come home tomorrow during an emergency one-week hiatus in classes, informed her mother Monday morning via cell phone that there had been a shooting on campus.

"She sounded quite blase," Portnoy, a lawyer and court reporter on Capitol Hill, said in a telephone interview. Her daughter said she had learned of the shootings from her boyfriend, Luke Kalmar, while they were in his dormitory room, located a few hundred yards from the school's science and engineering building, the site of 30 fatalities.

Juliana Portnoy, who was unharmed, said she never heard gunfire.

At first, Portnoy said she assumed that there was only one victim and that the shooter had been apprehended. "It seemed like everything had been taken care of," she said.

But as the morning wore on and melded into afternoon, she and other students on campus learned through administration-issued e-mails and television reports that there were many more shootings and that the body count had risen dramatically.

Around noon, Ellen Portnoy received a text message on her cell phone. It was from her daughter, and it said simply: "Oh my god 20 dead."

Juliana Portnoy said apparently none of her friends was among the victims, "but you never know how you might be connected with a person." She does, however, have friends who do know victims. "Everybody is just in shock; it seems very unreal," she added.

Alison Uttermann, another Virginia Tech student who is a member of Agudas Achim, said being on campus during the massacre was a "terrifying experience." But she added, "I was glad to see how the entire community pulled together after it."

Monday's massacre, the largest in American history on a college campus, occurred at a school with a small Jewish student population: 1,400 out of a total of 29,000, according to Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. As of Tuesday morning, no Jewish students were believed to be among the dead, although one Jewish student was injured he broke his ankle leaping to safety through a second-floor window. That student, who has not been identified, was reported to be in the hospital.

Sue Kurtz, the Hillel director on campus, held a meeting with Jewish students Monday night and was planning a second meeting Tuesday. Kurtz delivered a reading at a university-wide convocation Tuesday afternoon.

Victor Jason Kasoff was on his way to class in the building next door to Norris Hall, the science and engineering building, when a professor yelled, "There's a live gun situation."

Kasoff, the president of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi, said he then saw a policeman with his gun drawn who yelled, "Run away! Get away from here!"

The junior mechanical engineering student from Richmond then went to a fraternity brother's apartment where he began calling the rest of his chapter. Though none of the deceased belonged to the fraternity, Kasoff said he thought that the student who had broken his ankle was an inactive AEPi member.

"With such a small Jewish community, it's pretty easy to know everybody," said Kasoff, who attended a service at the Blacksburg Jewish Community Center Monday night. "Blacksburg itself is not a large city; Virginia Tech basically makes the city."

The school, he added, "is a very social, a very bustling place so everyone knows somebody affected by this, and it's going to make things very difficult."

Kasoff said that AEPi will be involved with some type of philanthropic event to commemorate those who were killed in the massacre, though he was not sure of the details. Though many students are going home for the week, Kasoff said he would remain on campus.

"I need to be a supportive figure here, and I'm going to make sure I take that position seriously," he said. "[The] thing is to help the brothers cope and also help out the community as best as I can."

Jacob Eberhart, a freshman from Philadelphia who is studying industrial design, also called the community close-knit. Eberhart also attended the memorial service Monday night at the Blacksburg JCC with his fraternity brothers in AEPi.

"A lot of people were really upset; I'm really upset," he said.

One of Librescu's students, Alec Calhoun, told the Associated Press that around 9:05 a.m. on Monday, he and his classmates heard "a thunderous sound from the classroom next door, what sounded like an enormous hammer."

When students realized the sounds were gunshots, Calhoun said, they started flipping over desks to use them as hiding places, while others dashed to windows of the second-floor classroom, kicked out the screens and jumped to safety. Calhoun said that just before he jumped, he turned to see Librescu blocking the classroom door from the gunman's onslaught.

Eli Livne, a professor in the University of Washington's College of Engineering in Seattle, and a longtime colleague of Librescu's, said in an e-mail that was circulated that his friend was "excommunicated" by the Romanian regime when he applied for a visa to immigrate to Israel in the 1970s, a move that eventually was made possible by the direct intervention of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

During Tuesday's convocation at Virginia Tech, where President George W. Bush also spoke, Hillel director Kurtz began by saying, "At this time of great tragedy we are left with more questions than answers."

She continued by reading passages from Ecclesiastes, which a young woman then translated into Hebrew: "To every thing there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance."

She ended her address by expressing the hope that the community will be able "to move from a time of violence and sorrow to a time of healing and peace," and that "the memory of the righteous will be a blessing."

The convocation, attended by thousands, also featured remarks by a Muslim speaker, Sedki Riad. "On behalf of the Muslim community," he said, "we express our sincere condolences to the family and friends of the innocent victims who we lost yesterday."

Death, he said, "strikes everyday ... it comes to remind us of how vulnerable we are, no matter what we do."

In the wake of the tragedy, reaction from Jewish organizations poured in from near and far.

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington have jointly organized a Northern Virginia Service of Healing and Unity, scheduled for Sunday, 5-5:45 p.m. at Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church. All area rabbis are invited to participate.

The Hillel at George Mason University in Fairfax has scheduled time immediately before Shabbat dinner tomorrow for students to share their thoughts regarding the tragedy.

"Many of the kids here know students at Virginia Tech, so needless to say, the tragedy has been a big topic of conversation," said Scott Bailey, director of the GMU Hillel. "Life goes on on campus, but this has been on everybody's mind. Not a minute goes by without somebody mentioning it. People have been very empathetic. With this happening on a large state university campus, it's easy for any of us to put ourselves in that situation and imagine what it might have been like."

Meanwhile, the tragedy prompted the National Council of Jewish Women to call on the nation's leaders to seriously address the issue of gun control and gun violence.

"As the toll from gun violence mounts, we feel compelled to ask, how many more tragedies will it take to spur lawmakers to take decisive action to address this problem," NCJW president Phyllis Snyder said in a prepared statement released Tuesday.

Gabe Ross, WJW intern, and JTA's Ben Harris contributed to this article.