Masiulytė Elena

Elena Masiulytė was born on 26 October 1926 into a family of middle peasants in Gudėniškės village, Kuktiškiai rural district, Utena county. She finished six forms and was admitted to Utena gymnasium, but the National Socialist occupation prevented her from finishing it. Elena was among the young people who were taken to Germany. When she returned to Lithuania, in 1945, she attended Utena gymnasium for adults, finished it successfully in two years, and became a student of the German language and literature at the Faculty of History and Philology of Vilnius University in 1947. Her family was hiding from deportation and in her third year of studies, on 20 October 1950, Elena was forced to submit an application in which she asked the rector to allow her to leave the university ‘due to material hardships’. Several days later the rector issued order No ST-75 by which he granted her application. Elena was hiding in the town of Salakas in Ignalina district, because in 1951 her family was deported for their connections with the partisans and as ‘kulaks’ for the amount of land they owned. Early in January 1952, Elena was arrested and deported to Krasnoyarsk region. In 1953, Vilnius University received Elena Masiulytė’s request from Krasnoyarsk in which she was asking for an academic reference note in Russian. The document was sent to her on 16 June 1953. Masiulytė remained in exile until 1956. When she returned to Lithuania, she was allowed to reside in the town of Obeliai where she taught German for the rest of her life.

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