Michael ZINGERIS was born on 5 December 1918 in Alytus (Yiddish Alite) Lithuania, in the family of Jacob ZINGER, owner of a brewery, and Anna, n�e SENZOHN. The name Zingeris is the same as Singer, although with Lithuanian ending -is of the masculine nominative case in singular. The kin Zingeris acquired this Lithuanian ending because they were Litvaks, original Ashkenazi Jews of Lithuania (Yiddish Lite).
		After graduating from Kaunas Sholom Aleykhem Gymnasium, Michael Zingeris continued his education at a Technical School. This was time, when in spite of his origin from the prosperous class, he took interest in the problem of social injustice and became a Marxist. Nevertheless he was one of those rare Lithuanian left-wingers who did not trust in the Russian Stalinist regime. He was an inquisitive person who took his interest in history and languages. Esperanto was one of his hobbies, it essentially broadened the circle of his acquaintances. Broad contacts helped him to critically evaluate not only the dangerous developments in Germany, but also the nature of the Stalin's dictatorship. In 1940 Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet army and incorporated into the Soviet Union. On the eve of the Nazi aggression, at the beginning of June 1941, many thousands of the High and Middle Class Lithuanians, including Jewish businessmen and prosperous persons, were deported to Russia as political prisoners.       When the war broke out, there remained only several days during which it was possible for the Jews to escape from the nearing German army. The Bolsheviks restored the older frontier with Lithuania immediately and bared the way of the Jewish refugees into Russia. The Jews deported by the Bolsheviks appeared to have been happier than those stopped at the former Soviet frontier. They faced cruel armed communist border-guards in front of them when they had been already shot from attacking German Messerschmidt planes behind them. By good luck Michael Zingeris succeeded to arrange the flight of his family to the East. When he told his mother to go together with him to the railway station immediately, she categorically refused saying: 'How can I abandon my home, my property, my piano! I remember the Germans from the time of the First War, they are highly cultured nation, they cannot harm us!" Then Michael Zingeris took out his revolver and, menacing with it, pushed his mother into the car.       When in Russia, M. Zingeris entered the Soviet 16th Lithuanian division and fought in it up to the end of the war. In 1945 he came back to Lithuania where almost all of his relatives had perished. Up to his dismissal in 1946 he was engaged as a steward at military commissariats in Marijampole (Yiddish Mariyampol) and in Prienai (Yiddish Pren).       At the end of 1945 he married Pauline Tatarski from Kaunas, who had escaped from the Nazi concentration camps and returned back to Lithuania in September 1945. Pauline was an acquaintance of him since the pre-war time because she had learned together with his sister Roza at the same 4th Kaunas Gymnasium. On 24 December 1946 their first son Mark (Lithuanian Markas) was born in Prienai. Then M. Zingeris dismissed and went together with his family to Kaunas. His flat in the center being occupied by new-comers, first they lived in the remote part of the town, but soon M.Zingeris succeeded to get the old flat from the authorities. At that time he was engaged as a teacher of English in Aleksotas, a part of Kaunas on the other side of the river Neman.       On 16 July 1957 their second son Emmanuel (Lithuanian Emanuelis), Manulik, was born in Kaunas.       Michael Zingeris was engaged as a teacher of English till 1984. When retired, he was allowed to purchase a modern flat in a new building in the center, where he, his wife and both sons moved and where he died soon, in 1988.
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