Student Dovydas Svirskis

Student Dovydas Svirskis (1921–2011) was born in a family of civil servants. He finished ‘Tushia’ mathematics and natural sciences lyceum and in 1939 became a student at Stephen Bathory University. From 1940, he started his studies at the Chemistry Department of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of Vilnius University, and finished the first year. Dovydas was a student of Professor Antanas Žvironas, another Memory Diploma nominee. He was expelled from Vilnius University on 19 September 1941 along with other Jewish students on the basis of the order of the Department of Higher Education of the Board of Education, which was subordinate to the Nazies. During the Holocaust, Svirskis was imprisoned in Vilnius ghetto from which he escaped and joined a partisan platoon in the forest of Rūdininkai. On 3 February 1945, Dovydas Svirskis filed a request with Vilnius University asking for his personal documents, including his student’s record book, and indicated that the reason behind his request was departure for Poland. In September 1945 he arrived in Palestine and later built his life in the State of Israel.

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