Kaplanas Chaimas

On 11 October 1919, Maisiejus Kaplanas and his wife welcomed a new addition to their family, a son Chaimas Kaplanas. From 1934–1937, Chaimas attended the private coeducational gymnasium of Ch. Epstein and I. Speizer in Vilnius. He finished the gymnasium by passing examinations in the humanities with good and excellent grades. Although Chaimas’s achievements pointed to his aptitude for history, philosophy, and mathematics, he chose to study chemistry at the Vilnius Stephen Bathory University (1937). After two years of studies the political circumstances changed (the Polish-administered Stephen Bathory University became the Lithuanian-administered Vilnius University in 1939) and in 1940 Chaimas continued chemistry studies at Vilnius University. On 19 September 1941, Chaimas Kaplanas and other Jewish students were expelled from the 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. Presumably, it is this Chaimas Kaplanas that appears on the list of prisoners murdered in 1944/45 in the Schoenberg concentration camp.

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