Miervaldis Birze was a Latvian writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, publicist

Publicist

A publicist is a person whose job is to generate and manage publicity for a public figure, especially a celebrity, a business, or for a work such as a book, film or album...

, physician

Physician

A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

 and Holocaust

The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

 survivor.

Biography

Birze was born into the family of a municipal employee in Rūjiena

Rujiena

-Notable people:Arturs Alberings, Prime Minister of Latvia from 7 May 1926 to 18 December, 1926.Gustav Klutsis Constructivist Photographer and Graphic DesignerMoses Wolf Goldberg, chemist, was born here in 1905.-External links:*...

. He completed primary school in 1933. After the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940

Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940

The Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940 refers, according to the European Court of Human Rights, the Government of Latvia, the State Department of the United States of America, and the European Union, to the military occupation of the Republic of Latvia by the Soviet Union ostensibly under the...

, Birze joined the Young Communist League

Young Communist League

The Young Communist League was or is the name used by the youth wing of various Communist parties around the world. The name YCL of XXX was generally taken by all sections of the Communist Youth International.Examples of YCLs:...

. He was arrested in July, 1941, after the Occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany

Occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany

The occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany was completed on July 10, 1941 by Germany's armed forces. Latvia became a part of Nazi Germany's Reichskommissariat Ostland — the Province General of Latvia...

. He was first held in prison in Valmiera

Valmiera

Valmiera is the largest city of the historical Vidzeme region, Latvia, with a total area of 18.1 km². It is the center of the Valmiera District. As of 2002, Valmiera had a population of 27,323, and in 2008 – 27,569....

, then transferred to the Salaspils concentration camp

Salaspils concentration camp

Salaspils concentration camp was established at the end of 1941 at a point 18 km southeast of Riga . The Nazi bureaucracy drew distinctions between different types of camps. Officially, Salaspils was a Police Prison and Work Education Camp...

. After this he was assigned to do forced labor in the construction of a hangar at the Spilve Airport

Spilve Airport

Spilve Airport is a former civilian and military airport in Latvia located 5 km north of the Riga city centre, from which aircraft took off as early as the First World War. It became the first international airport of Riga in the 1930s and fell into disuse in 1980s after the new Riga...

 in Riga

Riga

Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...

. In July, 1944 he was among 1,200 people transported to Germany and interned in the Buchenwald concentration camp

Buchenwald concentration camp

Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...

. In April 1945, during the evacuation of the camp, Birze managed to escape. He tried to return home through Poland, where he was arrested and held from May until September in the filtration camp in Hrodna

Hrodna

Grodno or Hrodna , is a city in Belarus. It is located on the Neman River , close to the borders of Poland and Lithuania . It has 327,540 inhabitants...

. The time he spent in these camps and prisons is reflected in his literary works, especially in his novel Yet Icebound Rivers Flow.

He graduated from the University of Latvia

University of Latvia

University of Latvia is a university located in Riga, Latvia. Being established in 1919, University of Latvia is the biggest university in the Baltic states.-History:...

 Faculty of Medicine in 1949. After graduation he worked as a doctor in Cēsis

Cesis

Cēsis , is a town in Latvia located in the northern part of the Central Vidzeme Upland. Cēsis is on the Gauja River valley, and is built on a series of ridges above the river overlooking the woods below...

. He died there in 2000.

Yet Icebound Rivers Flow

"I took to writing when I was in my thirties. By then, I had finished secondary school in Valmiera on the lovely Gauja River, had been a medical student in Riga for two years, had spent four years of the war in various concentration camps in Latvia and in Germany, Buchenwald included, had resumed my medical studies, graduated, and been a doctor for several years. My first short stories and humorous sketches were published in 1953. In 1957, I discarded humour and wrote Yet Icebound Rivers Flow. Why did I touch once more the wounds inflicted on the Latvian people by German fascists? Does not every human being, like you and me, yearn for sunshine, for peace, for kindness? Is it necessary to bring back to mind pain and sufferings? Yes. It was necessary to write this book. First, because I knew all the people in it, good and bad, and was present at the funeral of those two whose bodies were burnt. Second, because it would have been unjust to allow the heroism of true enthusiasts to slip into oblivion, to forget those who gave everything for the happiness of their people. Finally, this event has to be recalled so that what happened then may never reoccur. I did not succeed in rendering the event in its entirety. But who has been able to paint the ocean in all its fathomless grandeur? I only hope that the events described here will never repeat themselves, so that I may continue to live in Cēsis, a little town on the Gauja, and cure people with weak lungs, and write humorous short stories."

Miervaldis Birze, from Yet Icebound Rivers Flow.

English translations

• Yet Icebound Rivers Flow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow. from Archive.org