Biography

Meras was born in 1934 in Kelmė

Kelme

Kelmė is a city in central Lithuania. It has a population of around 11,000 and is the administrative center of the Kelmė district municipality.-History:Prior to World War II, Kelmė was home to a famous Rabbinical College, the Kelm Talmud Torah....

, a town in northwestern Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

, 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. "On July 28, 1941, I was being taken to a ditch to be shot," he wrote later. "Due to chance, they decided to return some of the children. Due to another chance, I fell in with people who valued the life of a seven-year old child."

Hidden and adopted by a Lithuanian peasant family, Meras survived the war. In the violent and troubled post-war years Meras attended secondary school and soon revealed an inclination towards writing when he came to work for the local Kelmė newspaper.

In 1958 he graduated from the Kaunas Polytechnic Institute

Kaunas University of Technology

- KTU :Kaunas University of Technology is one of the largest technical universities in the Baltic States.In Webometrics Ranking of World Universities 2010 KTU took the highest ratings among Lithuanian higher education institutions as having the web of best presence, visibility and accessibility...

 with a degree in radio electronics

Radio electronics

*For the magazine, see Radio-ElectronicsRadio electronics is the sub-field of electrical engineering concerning itself with the class of electronic circuits which receive or transmit radio signals....

, 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. In 1963 Meras published two works: Žemė visada gyva (The Earth is Always Alive) and his best-known work internationally, Lygiosios trunka akimirką (A Stalemate Lasts But a Moment). In 1965 Meras published another novel, Ant ko laikosi pasaulis (What the World Rests On). In 1971 there followed Mėnulio savaitė (The Week of the Moon) and Senas fontanas (The Old Fountain). In 1971 Meras presented his darkly existencialist

Existentialism

Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...

 novel Striptizas, arba Paryžius — Roma — Paryžius (Striptease or Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

-Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

-Paris). This work was published in literary monthly magazine Pergalė and was roundly criticised by Communist party

Communist Party of Lithuania

The Communist Party of Lithuania was a communist party in Lithuania, established in early October 1918. The party was banned in December 1926.-History:...

 officials.

Under increasing pressure from the KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

 authorities for his literary "deviations," he emigrated from Lithuania to Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 in 1972.

In 6 December 2010 Meras won Lithuanian National Prize

Lithuanian National Prize

The Lithuanian National Prize , established in 1989, is an award granted for achievements in culture and the arts. It has been awarded annually in six categories since 2006...

.