Ephraim Kishon - Biography

Biography

Ephraim Kishon was born on August 23, 1924 by the name of Ferenc Hoffmann into a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. In his youth he did not know Hebrew nor Yiddish. His father worked as a bank manager and his mother was a secretary. Kishon also had a sister who was a writer.

His writing talent was evident in his youth. In 1940 he won his first prize for writing a novel for high school students. Due to the racial laws applied in Hungary during World War II, he was not allowed to continue his studies at the university and therefore he began to study jewelry making in 1942.

During World War II the Nazis imprisoned him in several concentration camps. At one camp his chess talent helped him survive, as the camp commandant was looking for an opponent. In another camp, the Germans lined up the inmates and shot every tenth person, but passed him by. He later wrote in his book The Scapegoat, "They made a mistake—they left one satirist alive". He eventually managed to escape the concentration camps while being transported to the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, and hid the remainder of the war disguised as "Stanko Andras", a Slovakian laborer.

After the war when he returned to Budapest he discovered that his parents and sister survived, but many other family members were murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. In 1945, he changed his surname from Hoffmann to Kishont to disguise his Jewish origins, and returned to Hungary, where he continued to study art and write. In 1948 he completed his studies in metal sculpturing and art history and began publishing humorous articles under the name Franz Kishunt.

In 1949 he immigrated to the newly founded state of Israel, together with his first wife Eva (Chawa) Klamer, to escape the Communist regime. When arriving in Israel an immigration officer officially Hebraicized his name to "Ephraim Kishon". According to the Kishon, the Jewish Agency clerk asked him for his name and when he answered "Ferenc" the clerk said: There is no such thing, and wrote "Ephraim", and afterwards he went ahead and Hebraicized his family name as well.

His first marriage to Eva (Chawa) Klamer in 1946 ended in divorce. In 1959, he married Sara (née Lipovitz), who died in 2002. In 2003, he married the Austrian writer Lisa Witasek. Kishon had three children: Raphael (b. 1957), Amir (b. 1963), and Renana (b. 1968).

In 1981, Kishon established a second home in the rural Swiss canton of Appenzell after feeling unappreciated in Israel, but remained a staunch Zionist.

Kishon died on January 29, 2005 at his home in Switzerland at the age of 80 following a cardiac arrest. His body was flown to Israel and he was buried at the Trumpeldor cemetery in Tel Aviv.

Due to the fact he is the Israeli most popular director and one of it's most popular writers, he felt he was getting negative treatment from the Israeli media due to the fact he was Right wing in politics.