Juozas Bagurskas lived with his wife Marijona and their children in Mikalinava, near Kaunas. The Bagurskas family farmed and ran a small shop. They raised daughters Danutė and Aldutė and a disabled son, Vytautas. Their home had a garden, and the family kept a cow, a horse and pigs. A match factory operated nearby, about 200 metres from the house.

During the Second World War, the young child Maksimas Broeris came into the care of the Bagurskas family. He had been born on 1 January 1941 in Kaunas into a Jewish family. His mother Roza (Reizel) Ring came from Pabradė, and his father Šlomas (Šleimė) Broeris from Šiauliai. Both parents were tailors. After the German occupation of Kaunas, the family was confined in the Kaunas ghetto.

In 1944, when Maksimas was three, people willing to hide him were found. After a guard at the ghetto fence was bribed, the boy was carried out in a sack of potatoes and entrusted to the Bagurskas family.

The Bagurskas family accepted Maksimas as a member of their own family. Until then he had spoken mostly Yiddish, but he quickly learned Lithuanian. For safety he was baptised and given the name Albinas Bagurskas. He still had to be hidden from strangers. At times Maksimas hid in the attic together with the Bagurskas family's son Vytautas: Maksimas so that he would not be identified as a Jewish child, and Vytautas to avoid possible deportation for forced labour in Germany.

As an adult, Maksimas recalled feeling the care of every member of the Bagurskas family. Interestingly, the boy simply called Juozas “Juozapas”, while he addressed Marijona as Mrs Bagurskienė.

As the Germans retreated, the match factory near the Bagurskas home was blown up. During bombing raids the family hid in a shelter dug in the garden. On one occasion the frightened Maksimas was left between the house and the shelter. The Bagurskas daughter Danutė ran out to get him and carried the boy to safety amid the explosions. Maksimas remembered this event for the rest of his life.

In 1944 Maksimas's father, who had survived after joining the partisans, returned and took his son from the Bagurskas family. Maksimas later spent some time in a Jewish children's home. He remembered the separation from the Bagurskas family as a painful experience.

The bond between the Bagurskas and Broeris families did not end with the war. Maksimas's mother returned from the Stutthof concentration camp and the Broeris family was reunited. Maksimas later spent his summer holidays with the Bagurskas family and helped their children with everyday farm work, caring for the cow, horse and pigs.

When Soviet rule returned, the Bagurskas family lost almost all of their property, but avoided deportation to Siberia.

Many years later Maksimas asked the Bagurskas daughter Aldutė why her parents had decided to take in and rescue a Jewish child despite putting the whole family at risk. Aldutė offered a very practical explanation: their brother Vytautas was disabled, so in the future the farm would have needed a man able to work. Maksimas recalled being surprised by such a simple answer. This memory does not necessarily explain all of Juozas and Marijona's motives.

Maksimas Broeris grew up, graduated from Kaunas Polytechnic Institute and in 1972 emigrated to Israel with his wife and daughter.

Juozas Bagurskas died in 1970.