Stumbling Stones, a series of stories by LRT RADIO, pays tribute to some of the most accomplished Litvaks born in Lithuania.
Icchokas Meras (1934–2014), whose best-known writing is informed by the Holocaust, considered himself a Lithuanian author. After emigrating to Israel, Meras campaigned to have Lithuanians who saved Jews during the Holocaust recognised as Righteous Among the Nations
Meras was born to a Jewish family in 1934 in Kelmė, northwestern Lithuania. His parents perished during the Holocaust and Icchokas was subsequently raised by a Lithuanian family.
The experience marked Meras and his writing for the rest of his life.
He debuted as a writer in 1960 with The Yellow Patch (Geltonas lopas), a collection of autobiographical short stories.
He followed up with several more short story collections and novels and authored several film scripts, three of which have been produced.
Meras' best-known novel, Stalemate (Lygiosios trunka akimirką), published in 1963, is structured around a chess game between a Nazi commandant of the Vilnius Ghetto and a young Jewish inmate.
Despite living through one of the deadliest periods of European history, Meras' writing is full of life metaphors, says literary scholar Loreta Mačianskaitė of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore.
“In his autobiography, Meras recounts how as a kid he used to herd animals somewhere near pines where his mother was executed,” she says. “And he describes the unnaturally tall grass growing from the gravel. For him, the greenery and life is important – that grass can crack the stone.”
In 1972, Meras emigrated to Israel, in protest against the Soviet regime.
Still, he continued to write in Lithuanian, Mačianskaitė says.
“He considered himself a Lithuanian writer and he resented being put in a separate category like ‘Jewish-Lithuanian authors’,” she says. “He used to say that language is your world, that a writer's nationality is his language.”
“Meras also contributed with his writing to this work of remembering, to changing how we see saviors, victims, freedom, suffering, the meaning of human choice,” Mačianskaitė says.
Meras' writing has been translated into over 20 languages, including English, Yiddish, Hebrew, Spanish, German and French.
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