First meeting with the Brother
Recollections of Sara Finkelbrand
Mrs. Serafinienė was an elderly but very lively woman. She would comfort me as best as she could. She was also a pious person: she would pray God to save Lithuania from the “Antichrist” and would tell me to pray too. However, prayers were not enough. Mrs. Serafinienė felt that the fight with the “Antichrist” needed more tangible action. Despite the risk, she turned her apartment into a coordination office. Here, residents of the ghetto would meet with this mysterious person Mr. Bronius Gotautas mentioned by the pharmacist. Mrs. Serafinienė was living with her husband and a sick daughter. Because of her sickness, the daughter was apathetic to everything, while the husband was not aware of his wife’s contacts whatsoever. All appointments were made when the husband was out of home. Mrs. Serafinienė also had a son, who had been serving in the Soviet fleet since the beginning of the war. She had received a message that the ship with her son aboard was bombed and that the boy had jumped into the sea. However, there was no news whether he survived. Mrs. Serafinienė shed many tears praying for him.
After a while, the doors opened and a short man with a wide brown beard came into the room. He was wearing a patched overcoat and had a leather bag hanging from his shoulder. Mrs. Serafinienė and everybody else called him Brother. Not many people knew his real name.
Brother took a couple of passports out of his bag. One of those was in the name of Ms. Bronė Kukytė. Her age, height and hair colour matched those of mine. Even the picture resembled me. After a short discussion, we decided that I could use this passport even without changing the picture. The second passport belonged to an elderly woman Jadvyga Širvelienė. By a coincidence, her features, age and personal attributes resembled those of my husband’s sister. Mrs. Serafinienė saw a divine sign in these coincidences. She said that our scheme would be successful and was very happy about it.
Brother instructed us to study the passports very carefully so we could say our places of birth and residence, and the names of our fathers without thinking twice. Moreover, he advised us to inquire about the hometowns of the former owners of the passports and to invent our biographies and to stick to them. Whereas according to the passport I was not married, our child had to become Širvelis. Brother promised to get him a birth certificate in this name. He advised me to flee immediately as there were rumours that the ghetto would be liquidated by the New Year. He gave me the address of Ms. Pūkytė – a woman who was living in the old town. We had to stay in her place overnight after our escape.
With trembling hands I took the passports, hid them deeply and with tears of gratitude I parted with my benefactors.
“Unarmed Fighters”. Ed. S. Binkienė. Vilnius, 1967
