Other events in Baltic States

On Thursday in Israel, writer Icchokas Meras died at the age of 74, informs LETA/ELTA.

Lithuania's Ambassador to Israel Darius Degutis has reported about the death of the famous Lithuanian writer, said lrytas.lt.

Icchokas Meras was one of the most interesting figures in contemporary Lithuanian letters. His unique style and originality have won him recognition both in his native country and the Lithuanian diaspora in the West. Since 1963 his novels and short stories have been translated into Russian, French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Estonian, Bulgarian, Norwegian, Tadzhik, Georgian and, now, English.

Meras was born in 1934 in Kelme, a town in northwestern Lithuania, which contained one of the country's oldest Jewish communities. His family perished during the fateful and tragic summer of 1941 when the Nazis undertook the liquidation of Lithuania's Jews, but young Icchokas escaped the Holocaust. Hidden and adopted by a Lithuanian peasant family, Meras survived the war.

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.

In 1963 Meras published two works: Zeme Visada Gyva (The Earth is Always Alive) and his best-known work internationally, Lygiosios Trunka Akimirka (A Stalemate Lasts But a Moment). This latter novel, a profoundly psychological account of the Vilnius ghetto during the German occupation, established Meras as a major new force in Lithuanian literature. Lygiosios has been translated into a number of Soviet and East European languages, and has also appeared in German and French.

The other works of Meras include novels Ant Ko Laikosi Pasaulis (What the World Rest On), Menulio Savaite (The Week of the Moon), Senas Fontanas (The Old Fountain) and Striptizas, Arba Paryzius – Roma – Paryzius (Striptease or Paris – Rome – Paris).

Under increasing pressure from the authorities for his literary "deviations," Icchokas Meras emigrated from Lithuania in 1972 and had been living in Holon, Israel until now.

The Lithuanian-American press Ateitis published Striptizas in 1976 and the same year Meras' novel was awarded the emigre Lithuanian Writers' Association Prize for Literature.