"We will take care to keep this Booklet clean!"

After my Mom graduated from high school, she selected this photo for both her internal passport and for her medical-school identification at Vytautas Magnus University.

Kaunas, Lithuania, 1941. Mom still wears her high-school uniform in this photo.

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Here is the photo, in context, as part of Mom's medical-school "Studijų Knygelė," or "Studies Booklet." The Booklet acted as both a form of identification and as a report card. After the inside cover, reproduced below, establishes the student's identity, the remaining twenty or so pages consist of a record of the courses the student took, the professors who taught the courses, the date the student completed coursework, and the grades the students earned in each class.

Kaunas, Lithuania, 1941. When the Germans closed the university, many professors continued teaching classes on an "audit" basis. Occasionally, the professors conducted these "auditing" classes in their homes; later, they sometimes secured permission to use classrooms. Eventually, the Germans reopened the medical school.

Evidence of these developments appears on Mom's Booklet. The word "studentas" is crossed out in black ink and replaced with the word "hospitantė," or "auditor." Mom became an auditor when the school closed. Later, the red-inked "studentė" (the feminine form of "student") replaced "hospitantė," indicating that the school had reopened, and Mom reenrolled as a regular student.

The Booklet also shows a glimmer of the authoritarian nature of those times. At the bottom of the inside cover appears an admonishment: "Šią Knygelė išsaugokime švarią!" In English, that reads, "We will take care to keep this Booklet clean!"