BY DANIEL SHOER ROTH

It was April 1961, Havana, Cuba. Lilian Brinberg, 15-year-old daughter of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, had just been told some stunning news.

She and her younger sister, Silvia, would be leaving their parents, their friends and the only home they had ever known to fly to Miami, unaccompanied, and live with strangers in a foster home.

And so, the Brinberg sisters became part of a little-known chapter of Cuba's history: the Jewish kids of Pedro Pan -- the Catholic Church-sponsored effort to spirit unaccompanied Cuban kids to the United States under the noses of the Castro government.

Because it was run by the archdiocese in Florida and most children were cared for by Catholic social services, it has been assumed that the 14,048 who made the journey through Pedro Pan were Catholic.

In fact, 396 Jewish kids joined the exodus. For many -- the children of families decimated and divided by the Holocaust and that thought they had found paradise in pre-Castro Havana -- the journey culminated a double diaspora.

In Miami, they would struggle with the language, with the separation from loved ones, and with their diminished status in a new land.

''When the reality hit home, I started crying,'' said Elio Penso, who fled at 17 with his sister, Lily.

"I had never been without mommy and daddy for an entire weekend; I had never been on an airplane. Boarding that airplane, I lost my school, country, family, friends, toys, everything.''

Ultimately, the young Jews would find their footing in South Florida, reuniting with parents, adapting to new surroundings, growing up, prospering, and building a bedrock institution of the Jewish and Cuban communities -- the Cuban Hebrew Congregation of Miami, also known as ``The Circle.''

A few of them would also start a Cuban-oldies band called The Bagels.

CHILDREN 'MISSING'

Early in 1961, the children at Havana's bar-mitzvah club began to notice their numbers dwindling at Hebrew study. The Sunday gathering at the Patronato House of the Hebrew Community Center was a popular ritual, after which their parents would let the kids go on their own to the Wakamba restaurant and catch a movie at the Roxy Theater.

''No one knew why more kids were missing each time,'' Lilian Brinberg recalled. "Because everything was very hush-hush.''

But soon she would know. On March 27, her parents, Elias and Zelda, who ran a small tailor shop specializing in men's slacks, gathered the children in the living room and told them the news. The two sisters would have to leave their present lives behind.

''I cried my eyes out,'' Lilian said. "I never wanted to come.''

On April 15, they boarded a Cubana de Aviación plane.

Pedro Pan -- a name coined by Miami Herald reporter Gene Miller and inspired by the fairy tale about a boy who could fly -- was well under way, having started the day after Christmas, 1960.

The secretive airlift was initiated amid fears that Cuba, under Fidel Castro, would strip parental rights away and send children to work and study under the regime's control. Those fears may have been more acute among Cuban Jews, a community estimated at 15,000 by the late 1950s.

Although a significant number had come from the Middle East, many were Holocaust survivors who traveled alone to the island after seeing their families ripped apart by the Nazis.

To the Jews of Cuba, especially those who had fled the Holocaust, the United States was the ultimate destination -- or at least that's what they hoped. But immigration restrictions kept them out, at least in the short term.

Then they began to develop an attachment to the island. ''More than a refuge, they found a paradise,'' said Ruth Behar, a University of Michigan anthropologist who has done research on the Jews of Cuba.

SIMILAR SCENARIO

To those dislocated by World War II, the upheaval of Castro's revolution seemed sickeningly familiar, said Valery Bazarov, a historian for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

''It was like déjà vu,'' he said.

The aid society, based in New York, monitored the situation and would ultimately play a key role, providing Cuban Jews with the means to make the crossing, helping some with necessary documents and basic needs -- and sometimes paying the bill for transportation. Since its founding in 1881, the organization has provided essential services to world Jewry through its mission of rescue, reunion and resettlement.

It's a mystery why the exodus of these children during Operation Pedro Pan has produced so little recognition outside Jewish circles.

Marcos Kerbel, president of the Cuban Hebrew Congregation and a Pedro Pan Cuban himself, attributes the silence to the low profile the Jewish community in Cuba had traditionally maintained for fear of reprisals.

Documents from the archives of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in New York, dusted off as a result of a recent El Nuevo Herald request, tell the story of the Pedro Pan Jews and establish that 396 made the journey.

What's clear is that the experience of the Pedro Pan Jews was a bit different from that of the Catholics who made up the bulk of the group. While Catholic children without friends or family in the United States were sent to provisional campgrounds, the Jewish children were placed directly with Jewish foster families in South Florida and elsewhere. The resettlement was supervised by Jewish Family and Children's Services, which met them at Miami International Airport.

Each month, Jewish Services social workers visited the children individually to find out how they were feeling and what they needed. Living expenses were reimbursed by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

On arrival in South Florida, the Brinberg sisters lived with a foster family in Westchester. Lilian Brinberg graduated from Southwest Miami Senior High School. Their parents would follow them to Miami, arriving in September 1962.

Adapting to life in the United States required an abrupt change of habits, especially for those who had prospered in Cuba.

Alberto Bender, who was 12 at the time he made the move to Miami, noted: "In Cuba, I lived like a king. I had a bodyguard. I didn't lack anything.''

Not so in his new land.

ROOTS REPLANTED

After a while, Miami did start to feel like home for the displaced Jewish children. They began to meet on Sunday afternoons at Ocean Drive and 14th Street in Miami Beach, in the salt-sea air under the palm trees, evoking happier times in Havana. It was a long way, literally and figuratively, from the bar-mitzvah club in Havana, which had met at the luxurious Patronato House.

One Sunday, while strolling at Washington Avenue and 15th Street, they discovered a small, dim place in an arcade. They called the empty storefront ``The Cave.''

The children showed it to Cuban Jewish adults in the community, and they were soon renting it out. That's where the seed of the Cuban Hebrew Congregation was planted.

On weekends, the kids would bring a record player to dance and sets of dominoes to play. With time, they formed The Bagels, a band that recaptured memories from Old Cuba -- with classics like Guantanamera and Son de la Loma -- and Israeli folk music.

''We always tried to organize activities to keep us united,'' said Raul Gorfinkel, who was then the unofficial driver, as he was the only one with a car.

In 1975, after renting a succession of spaces throughout Miami Beach, they built a small temple at 1700 Michigan Ave. A decade later, they inaugurated the main synagogue, and the banquet hall of the congregation, currently with a membership of 420 families.

The original temple functions today as a chapel, decorated with multicolored stained glass depicting Old Jerusalem.

SENSE OF COMMUNITY

Three Pedro Pan kids have been president of the congregation's board of directors.

Despite the sorrow of having to leave everything behind, they became successful, and re-created the sense of community they once enjoyed in Cuba.

It wasn't easy at first. ''We were Jewish and Cuban, and we didn't find a lot of acceptance,'' Gorfinkel said.

However, as Jews have for generations, they overcame adversity and displacement -- especially those whose parents would later follow them to South Florida -- in the land that became their new home.

''We didn't have anything,'' Elio Penso said. "But we were happy the four of us were together.''