Zilberkveitaitė Marija

On 20 April 1920, in Vilnius, lawyer Borisas Zilberkveitas and his wife Eugenija Utievskaitė welcomed an addition to their family, daughter Marija. The family left Vilnius in the 1920s and moved to Warsaw. From 1929–1937, Marija attended the Aniele Werecka private gymnasium for women in Warsaw and after passing her graduation examinations she applied to the medical faculty of Warsaw University. According to Marija, she was not admitted to this faculty due to a limited number of places for Jewish students (numerus clausus). She then became a student at in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. After a year of studies, Marija decided to pursue her aim to study medicine and in 1938 she enrolled in the medical faculty of Grenoble University in France. Due to the hostilities of the Second World War and after a year of studies in France, Marija decided to return to her native Vilnius where she settled on Pylimo Street. Marija could speak Russian, Polish, German, French, English, and Lithuanian, and supported herself by giving private English and French lessons. She sought to continue her studies in her native city, and in 1940 applied to study chemistry in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of Vilnius University. Her application was rejected, yet thanks to the intercession of the then rector of Vilnius University she was admitted into the Physics Department. While studying physics, she submitted a number of applications asking to reconsider her application to study in the Chemistry Department stressing her predilection for this speciality. However, Marija did not succeed in becoming a student in the Chemistry Department. Her personal file includes evidence of the discussion of her case by the rector and the deans, which points to the actual reason: ‘Not admitted due to a better social status than the majority of admitted students and due to a weak connection with Lithuania (studies in Warsaw and Grenoble) (2 November 1940). On 19 September 1941, Marija was expelled from the Physics Department of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of Vilnius University on the basis of the Order of 17 September 1941 of the Higher Education Department of the Board of Education, which was subordinate to the Nazis. Nothing is known about her further fate.

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