Voldravaitė-Gabrienė Birutė

Voldravaitė-Gabrienė Birutė (1923-1985) was born in Vilnius to Carol Woldraf and Apolonija Liutkevičiūtė Voldravienė. In 1930, she started attending Vilnius Lithuanian Primary School. In 1936, she entered Vytautas Magnus Gymnasium in Vilnius. In the same year, Birutė’s father died. Due to a lack of funds her mother started working as an economist, hired a maid, and the girl was accommodated in the boarding dormitory Birutė. In 1941, she graduated from Vilnius III Gymnasium, at the same time receiving the title of a junior primary school teacher. As of September 1943, she worked as a teacher in Naujoji Vilnia, in 1944 – at the Commissariat of Agriculture and in the spring of 1946 – at the Ministry of Technical Cultures. In July 1946, she applied for admission to the Department of German Language and Literature at the Faculty of History and Philology of Vilnius University. Soon after, on 8 May 1947, she was expelled from Vilnius University. The official reason was “for non-attendance of lectures”, but the probable reason was the German origin of her father and the departure of her elder sister Ona – who worked as a German translator during the National Socialist occupation – to Germany and later to the US (1944). In addition, according to a family account, it may have been due to accusations of a surname change raised by the university administration and the refusal to take an exam on communism after entering the university. In 1949, Birutė enrolled at J. Tallat-Kelpša Music Tekhnikum but was expelled from it as well. From 1954 onwards, she worked all her life as a music and Lithuanian language teacher in Vilnius – Pavilnys and Naujoji Vilnia.

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