Icchokas Meras

He was born on October 8, 1934 in Kelmė. His family perished in 1941 when the Nazis undertook the liquidation of Lithuania's Jews, but hidden and adopted by a Lithuanian peasant family, Meras survived the war. In 1958 he graduated from the Kaunas Polytechnic Institute with a degree in radio electronics, but began devoting most of his spare time to literature. In 1960 Meras published his first collection of stories entitled Geltonas lopas (The Yellow Patch). He based his sketches on his own childhood experiences of Holocaust terror. He has written books and was author of three screen scripts. His books have been translated into English, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, Latvian, Estonian and others. Under increasing pressure from the KGB authorities for his literary "deviations," he emigrated from Lithuania to Israel in 1972 where he lived until his death.The written works of Meras have earned the author a number of awards in Lithuania and Israel, including the Lithuanian National Prize (6 December 2010). He died on March 13 2014 in Tel Aviv.