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In 1939 and 1940 he was the Lithuanian champion of the 100 m and 4 × 100 m race, improving the Lithuanian records of 60 m and 100 m. In 1948, he founded the Lithuanian Sports Medicine Center and was its first chief physician.
The name of Mykolas Preiss will remain in the history of Lithuanian athletics forever.
I learned more about M. Preisa, his contribution to the sports club “Makabi” and Lithuanian athletics by writing the book “Lithuanian Sports Club” Makabi “1916-2016” (Vilnius, Three Stars, 2016).
After all, it is not for nothing that athletics is called the queen of sports. It was also popular with the Lithuanian Maccabees. In addition, it did not require special conditions or sports facilities for its cultivation. It was available to both young and old. Maccabees also started participating in all Lithuanian sporting events. ‘1921 The first Lithuanian sports championships were held at Vytautas Hill in Kaunas on July 30 and 31, 2006, wrote Trimitas magazine. – Athletes from the LFL Union, the Kaunas German Sports Club, the Jewish Sports Union “Makabi” and the Kaunas School “participated in the match.
All Makabi clubs, both in towns and cities, were actively interested in athletics, and all clubs had athletic sections. Therefore, the good results did not have to wait long. S. Vaintraubaitė, M. Libermanas, S Glazaitė, M. Gelerman, S. Rozenbergas, L. Šacheraitė, F. Hanemanaitė, S. Bendzinaitė, I. Kugelis and others became Lithuanian record holders and champions in various athletics competitions .
Since 1937, the sports star of the talented runner, Mykolas Preis from Sagittarius, has been on the rise: for the first time he became the record holder for the 60-meter race in Lithuania, in 1938 he improved this record again.
“When I think about my childhood and adolescence, the Šiauliai State Children’s Gymnasium comes to mind,” shared Dr. Mykolas Preisas. “I had friends here, I felt the influence of Rozalija Sondeckienė, a very respected, warm and caring teacher, who really enjoyed the interesting lessons from PE teachers Leonas Puskunigis and Mykolas Levickas.”
M. Preis remembered well how he grew up in Šiauliai. As a child, he skated well, he was a table tennis champion in the gym at the same time, and later he especially liked athletics: 100-m running, long jumps, sprint relay races. He remembered how he lived with his parents in the house on Darius and Girėno streets. 49 (in front of the Kapitel Cinema). 1938 After graduating from the gymnasium, he entered the Faculty of Mathematics and Nature of the Vytautas Magnus University of Kaunas, but soon his life completely changed: he was called up for royal military service.
He served in the 8th Šiauliai Infantry Regiment for 18 months. For him, it was a time of physical and spiritual empowerment. In addition, the leadership of the regiment, knowing that this young soldier is a good runner, allowed him to participate in various competitions, including abroad. He masterfully represented Lithuanian sport everywhere. And after coming to Kaunas after the army, he entered another college and decided to study medicine. Since that day, all his activities have been related to sports and medicine.
In 1938, M. Preisas twice improved another Lithuanian record – in the 100m race – first by 11.1, then by 11.0 seconds. This record was only broken after 11 years. In 1938-1939, as a member of the national team, he participated in friendly matches between Lithuania and Latvia (Kaunas), Lithuania and Estonia (Tallinn), Lithuania and Poland (Warsaw) and all won the 100m race.
A significant event in his life as an athlete was the event of the Jewish sports clubs in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland – “Maccabia”, which in 1939. took place in Helsinki. M. Preis was also the first to start the final strip of the 100m race.
Unfortunately, later the sporting life of the Lithuanian Maccabees suffered many painful losses. After the beginning of the Soviet occupation, on July 22, 1940, the Minister of the Interior of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, M. Gedvilas, signed an order for the liquidation of the Lithuanian sports union “Makabi” with all its divisions and their assets were nationalized. And the Holocaust during the years of Nazi occupation dealt an even more painful blow.
Maccabee M. Preis managed to survive these difficulties. After the war, he not only continued to play sports. He became one of the pioneers of Lithuanian sports medicine. On May 25, 1948 he founded the Vilnius Republican Medical Physical Education Dispensary and ran it until 1973. He returned many young people to sports life.
In 1973, Prussia went to live in Israel.
“My relations with Lithuania are not broken, I correspond with my colleagues – Mr. Prussia wrote from Israel. – It is difficult to express in words the joy I had in 1998. in the spring of two letters received from Vilnius.
The Lithuanian Department of Physical Culture and Sports, congratulating me as a former “Lithuanian Athletics Champion and record holder, one of the pioneers of sports medicine”, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, awarded me the medal “For the merits of Lithuanian sport “.
In the following letter, the director of the Lithuanian Sports Medicine Center expressed his sincere wishes. Dr. Edmund Švedas and his colleagues, dozens of former collaborators. I thanked them with all my heart for not forgetting me, just as I will not forget my roots as long as I live ”.
“The name of Mykolas Preis will remain in the history of Lithuanian athletics forever,” says Semion Finkelstein, president of the Lithuanian sports club Makabi.
Prussia is buried in the Har Menucha central cemetery in Jerusalem.
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