Pnina Gurnofelski

Pnina Gurnofelski (Pnina Gurnofelskytė) (1923–1941?) was born in Vilnius into the family of Šmuelis and Roza Gurnofelski. In 1940, she was admitted to the seventh grade of the private Jewish “Tarbut” Gymnasium in Vilnius. She successfully graduated from the gymnasium in the spring of the same year. At the end of August 1940, she applied for admission to the Chemistry Department at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of Vilnius University, but was not admitted. On 3 October of the same year, she submitted a second application for admission to the History Department at the Faculty of Humanities, and it was accepted. Pnina Gurnofelski’s file, preserved in the archives of Vilnius University, contains a small unsigned note stating that she had been removed from the list of students for failing to pay tuition fees for the spring semester of the 1940–1941 academic year. It may be assumed that she later resumed her studies, since on 19 September 1941, in accordance with an order issued on 17 September 1941 by the Department of Higher Education under the Board of Education, which was subordinate to the National Socialist authorities, she was expelled from the Faculty of Humanities of Vilnius University. According to the “Yad Vashem” database, Pnina Gurnofelski may have been murdered during the Holocaust.