Emmanuel's elder brother Mark (in the middle) was his first closest friend:
		The story of Emmanuel's relations with his elder brother is full of adventures. As a little child he was the center of attention of all adults in the family. Love, what previously was the privilege of the single Mark, now was granted mostly to Emmanuel. This forced the elder to make fun of the younger. There was a pneumatic gun and a small-caliber rifle in their family. When playing Wilhelm Tell, Mark stood his "son" Emmanuel with an apple on the head and shot above the apple. In search to shoot at various targets (one of these was a volume of Lenin's works, another was no less officially sacred book of the communist Russian writer Nicholas Ostrovsky), one day Mark chose the entrance door. A small-caliber hole having appeared in the door in this way, he was frightened of what he had committed and he sent the younger to see, whether the door of the neighbors had been shot through too. Emmanuel went and came back informing that, yea, the neighbors' door had also been shot through. Many years later Emmanuel used to revenge Mark presenting him to diplomats as his younger brother...       Both brothers grew up among children of Lithuanian intellectuals who were deeply Anti-Soviet. The result was, that both became dissidents. Mark started as a philosopher but was forced to interrupt his carrier after he had not agreed to enter the communist party. He changed various positions, once even being vice-director at Kaunas Historical Museum. Now Markas Zingeris is a known Lithuanian poet and writer member of the Pen-Club.
	4 generations of Zingeris: Michael and Pauline, Michael's mother Anna, Emmanuel, Irene and Mark with their daughter Ruth in the center of Soviet Kaunas (1987 C.E.)
					Back to Michael Zingeris