Press release, 20 March 2014
Today, the Seimas has paid tribute, by a minute of silence, to the novelist and screenwriter Icchokas Meras, who died in Israel on 13 March 2014.
This person was the mainstay of our modern literature. He was born by the Jewish mother, who perished, and raised by the Lithuanian mother. He was the son of the two nations, and he was honoured by both nations. Here I see all the awards and do not know which one to mention. One of the most important is the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas awarded in 1995. There are also the Žemaitė literary prize won in 1995 and the literary prize given by the President of the State of Israel in 1998. Born in Kelmė in 1934, he was the person who lived all his life carrying the flags of the two nations in his heart and, most important, staying a European, said Emanuelis Zingeris, Member of the Homeland Union Lithuanian Christian Democrat Political Group, talking about Icchokas Meras.
Icchokas Meras, novelist and screenwriter of Jewish origin, was born in Kelmė on 8 October 1934. In the summer of 1941, Meras parents Yehuda and Miriam were shot. Icchokas survived and grew up in a peasant family in Samogitia. In 1958 he graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of Kaunas Polytechnic Institute and worked as an engineer.
Meras emigrated from Lithuania in 1972. After the restoration of Lithuanias independence in 1990, he worked as a diplomat for some time. He had been entrusted the consular affairs of Lithuania until Lithuanias Embassy was established in Israel.
Meras literary works are translated into the Estonian, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, German, French, Latvian, Norwegian, Georgian, Polish, Bulgarian, Czech, Tajik, English, Danish, Dutch, and Turkish languages.
Icchokas Meras, winner of numerous foreign prizes, was awarded the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas in 1995 and the Žemaitė literary prize in 2005.
Saulė Eglė Trembo, Public Relations Unit, tel. +370 5 239 6203, e-mail:[email protected]
