Biography
Schlessinger was born in Topusko, Croatia, to Jewish parents. His father Imre was from Slatina, his first wife and child were deported to Auschwitz. Schlessinger mother Rivka was from Bugojno, her first husband was killed by Ustashe. Imre and Rivka Schlessinger met in a labor camp in 1943 on the island Rab. There they joined a group of Jews who joined the Yugoslav Partisans. When Schlessinger was born on 26 March 1945 he was wrapped in a British military parachute. He was named for his grandfather. After World War II the family moved to Osijek, where another son, Darko David, was born. Imre Schlessinger once joked at the expense of Josip Broz Tito and was sentenced to several months in jail. The family moved to Israel in 1948.
Schlessinger served his compulsory military service with the Golani infantry brigade and was commissioned an officer. As part of his reserve duty he participated in the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War.
Schlessinger received his B.Sc. degree in Chemistry and Physics in 1968 (magna cum laude), and an M.Sc. degree in chemistry (also magna cum laude) in 1970 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He obtained his PhD degree in biophysics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1974. From 1974–1976, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Departments of Chemistry and Applied Physics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, working with Elliot Elson and Watt W. Webb. From 1977–1978, he was a visiting fellow in the immunology branch of the National Cancer Institute.
He is married to Irit Lax, an associate professor in the Pharmacology Department at Yale. They each have two children from a previous marriage.
In a 2009 interview with a Croatian daily newspaper Jutarnji list, he said, "Basically I am atheist. I grew up Jewish and I truly belong to the Jewish culture, but I'm not a follower of any world religion. Religion does not interest me at all."
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