Like everyone else, the small but cohesive Jewish community at Virginia Tech University was rocked by the massacre that claimed the life of a Holocaust survivor and 32 others on Monday, April 16.
The shootings shattered what the mother of one Washington-area Jewish student called a “utopian, idyllic existence” for everyone on the Blacksburg, Va. 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. His heroic efforts to save his students by blocking the classroom door with his body no doubt cost him his life.
Librescu, who made aliyah to Israel in 1978 and is survived by wife Marlina and sons Arieh and Joe, will be buried in Israel. Librescu 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, Va. resident Ellen Portnoy, a member of Agudas Achim Congregation in nearby Alexandria. Her 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.”
Alison Uttermann, another Virginia Tech student who is a member of Agudas Achim, said being on campus during the massacre was “terrifying.” But she added, “I was glad to see how the entire community pulled together after it.”
The shooter, who ultimately turned the gun on himself, was identified as Cho Seung-Hui, a Virginia Tech student.
The school has a small Jewish student population: 1,400 in 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.
Talya Mazor, 23, one of two professional Hillel staff on campus, was barricaded in her office in the multicultural center with some 50 students also seeking shelter during a campus lockdown.
At first, they had little information about what had happened other than that someone had been killed in West Ambler Johnston dorm, she said. Then, over the next four or so hours, rumors trickled in through cell phone calls, text messages and emails — as well updates from the TV in her office.
Sometime after noon, a TV press conference revealed that at least 20 students had died.
“There was an audible gasp in the room,” Mazor recalled. “Nobody believed it because it went from one [victim] to 20. Nobody understood it, and why we weren’t told anything.”
Soon after, they were told that the campus had been secured and they could leave, but many students, she said, remained wary.
Sue Kurtz, the Hillel director on campus, organized a memorial service Monday night at a local synagogue, and another on Tuesday.
Mazor said the Monday’s service was an important opportunity for students who hadn’t seen each other since the chaos of the shooting to reconnect.
Kurtz spoke read a passage from Ecclesiastes (which was translated into Hebrew) at a campus-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 where most of the shootings occurred and where Librescu was teaching, when a professor yelled, “There’s a live gun situation!”
Kasoff, 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, Va. then went to a friend’s apartment, where he began calling the rest of his chapter. Luckily, those he reached were OK. “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.
Though many students were 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.
One of Librescu’s students, Alec Calhoun, told the Associated Press that at 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 they realized the sounds were gunshots, Calhoun said, they started flipping over desks to use as hiding places, while others dashed to windows of the second-floor classroom, kicked out the screens and jumped to safety. Just before he jumped, Calhoun turned to see Librescu blocking the classroom door from the gunman’s onslaught.
Washington Jewish Week intern Gabe Ross, JTA’s Ben Harris and Hilary Leila Krieger of the Jerusalem Post contributed to this report.