Benediktas Mikulis was a Lithuanian partisan

Lithuanian partisans

The Lithuanian partisans can refer to various irregular military units in different historical periods active in Lithuania against foreign invaders and occupiers:...

 who lived in hiding for 27 years – first from the Nazis

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 and later from the Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

s during the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

.

The Mikulis family homestead is located in Prazariškės village in Žaislai elderate. Benediktas Mikulis resided under a stack of potatoes in a cellar

Basement

__FORCETOC__A basement is one or more floors of a building that are either completely or partially below the ground floor. Basements are typically used as a utility space for a building where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, car park, and air-conditioning system...

 crawlspace so small that it was often referred to as a coffin

Coffin

A coffin is a funerary box used in the display and containment of dead people – either for burial or cremation.Contemporary North American English makes a distinction between "coffin", which is generally understood to denote a funerary box having six sides in plan view, and "casket", which...

.

He lost the tips of several fingers to rat

Rat

Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus...

s while in hiding. At night, Mikulis would slip out unnoticed, do chores around the family home to support his ailing mother, and kill Nazis, and later, Soviets. He stayed so well hidden that for decades he was thought to be dead.

In 1971, Mikulis came out of hiding.

Mikulis was found by the Soviet militia in the 1980s and spent several years in jail. He believes that his neighbor turned him in, and even while in his late 80s, Mikulis declared that if he saw this neighbor, he would kill him with his bare hands.

Mikulis is featured in a Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 documentary about Lithuanian freedom fighters.