A massive fire erupted in an East Village apartment building Tuesday night — spreading to four floors and forcing the evacuation of an adjacent NYU dormitory, authorities said.

The blaze at 21 East 2nd Street, near Second Avenue, began around 11:30 p.m. on the second floor and quickly spread all the way to the fifth floor.

“I couldn’t breathe, there was so much smoke,” said Sherouk Hafiz, 19, who lives with his family on the fourth floor.

“I was sleeping — my whole family was — and then we heard the alarms,” Hafiz, a student said.

“On the way down we got stuck on the third floor because the smoke was so bad, I had to close my eyes.

“I lost my mother and brother but I found them outside. We were so scared.”

The three-alarm inferno ran mostly through one shaft in the building and was difficult to put out because several of the apartments were heavily cluttered, the FDNY said.

There was so much smoke that the neighboring NYU dorm had to be evacuated.

There were no injuries.