Kinkulkinaitė Bella

Bella Kinkulkinaitė was born on 3 January 1922 in Vilnius, to Izaokas and Rachelė Kinkulkinas. In 1939, Bella finished the A.J. Czartoryski Gymnasium in Vilnius and performed exceptionally well on her graduation examinations: she passed all subjects in the humanities and biology with the highest grades, and did well in the exact sciences. Bella’s family lived on 17 Basanavičiaus Street, in the area known as Pohulianka. It was from here that Bella, as a student of French and English in the Department of Philology of the Faculty of Humanities of Vilnius University, used to walk to her classes on Universiteto Street. However, she did not study for long. On 19 September 1941, Bella and many other Jewish students were expelled from 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. In 1941, Bella was deprived not only of her right to study but was also imprisoned in the Vilnius Ghetto. Although the fate of Bella Kinkulkinaitė in the Vilnius Ghetto is not known, the last entry of 1942 in the archive of the Vilnius Ghetto library indicated that she had not returned her borrowed books. The name of Bella Kinkulkin, born in 1922 in Vilnius, appears among the names of the Jews imprisoned and killed in the Klooga concentration camp (Estonia) between 1941 and 1944.

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