Jecevičiūtė (Vaškelienė) Selezija
Selezija Jeckevičiūtė was born on 2 July 1930 in Jasiuliškiai village, Vabalninkas rural district, Biržai county. From 1937 to 1940 she went to a primary school in Miliūnai and later continued her education in Vabalninkas. She went to a secondary school in Vabalninkas for some time and then moved to Vilnius with her sisters, who were hiding from deportation. From 1948, she went to Vilnius Salomėja Nėris Gymnasium and finished it in 1950. In the same year she applied to study finance at the Faculty of Economics of Vilnius University. She submitted an autobiography with her application, in which she wrote that she had lost both parents and had been an orphan from an early age, thus suppressing the fact of her parents’ deportation. When this fact became known, on 11 October 1951 Selezija was expelled from Vilnius University on the basis of a reference note by the dean of the Faculty of Economics, in which he wrote that when applying to the university, the student had withheld her ‘kulak’ origin and information on her parents (deported in 1948) as ‘elements dangerous to the Soviet order and supporters of the bandits’. Having lost the opportunity to study, the girl worked as an accountant at Vaidotas Eidukevičius footwear factory. She was also responsible for the factory’s wall newspaper. In 1953, she appealed to the rector of Vilnius University asking to be admitted to study in the second year at the Faculty of Economics, but her application was rejected. The same happened to her second application in 1954 when Selezija asked to be admitted to the third year of studies at the Faculty of Economics as she had completed two years of studies at the All-Union Institute of Finance by correspondence. Although she was not admitted even to the correspondence course at the university, Selezija advanced her career in the Eidukevičius footwear factory from an accountant to the head of the planning department.
