Literatureיצחק מראס

Icchokas Meras

Icchokas Meras was a Lithuanian-Israeli writer and Holocaust survivor whose books in Lithuanian often dealt with the Holocaust.

1932 to 2014Holocaust fiction in LithuanianA Stalemate Lasts But a MomentThe Yellow Patch

Born: 8 October 1932, Kelmė
Died: 13 March 2014, Tel Aviv
Occupation: screenwriter, writer
Education: Kaunas University of Technology

Icchokas Meras was born in 1932 in Kelmė

Meras was born in Kelmė, Lithuania, to Jehuda and Miriam Meras, a Jewish family. In 1941 his parents were murdered, but he and his older sister Jonina survived. After hiding and moving between families, he was adopted by Juozas and Bronislava Dainauskas, who protected him until the end of the war.

He finished secondary school in Kelmė in 1953 and worked for a local newspaper. He then studied radio engineering at the Kaunas Polytechnic Institute, graduating in 1958. He managed a laboratory for electronic devices until 1964 and then turned to writing.

His first book, The Yellow Patch, appeared in 1960 and drew on his childhood in the Holocaust. In 1963 he published A Stalemate Lasts But a Moment. His 1971 novel Striptease or Paris-Rome-Paris was criticized by Communist party officials.

Under pressure from the KGB, he moved to Israel in 1972 and settled in Holon. He taught electricity and electronics at an ORT college in Lod until 1998 and kept writing. His books were translated into 18 languages, and he died in 2014.