1. Ephraim Kishon was a Hungarian-born Israeli author, dramatist, screenwriter, and Oscar-nominated film director.
19 Facts About Ephraim Kishon
1. 2.
Ephraim Kishon was one of the most widely read contemporary satirists in Israel and was particularly popular in German-speaking countries.
3.
Ephraim Kishon was born on August 23,1924, by the name of Ferenc Hoffmann into a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary.
4.
Ephraim Kishon's father worked as a bank manager and his mother was a former secretary.
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Ephraim Kishon eventually managed to escape the concentration camps while being transported to the Sobibor extermination camp in Nazi German Occupied Poland, and hid the remainder of the war disguised as "Stanko Andras", a Slovak laborer.
6.
In 1981, Ephraim Kishon established a second home in the rural Swiss canton of Appenzell as he felt unwelcome in Israel due to his status as an immigrant.
7.
Ephraim Kishon died on January 29,2005, at his home in Switzerland at the age of 80 following a cardiac arrest.
8.
Ephraim Kishon's body was flown to Israel and he was buried at the Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv.
9.
Ephraim Kishon initially lived in the "Sha'ar Ha'Aliyah" transit camp near Haifa, and soon afterwards moved to Kibbutz Kfar Hahoresh, in which he worked as a nurse while learning the Hebrew language during his free time with the help of his neighbor Joseph Bilitzer.
10.
Ephraim Kishon studied Hebrew at the Ulpan "Etzion" in Jerusalem, and soon became proficient in the language.
11.
Later on Ephraim Kishon began writing for the newspaper "Davar" in which he published a satire called "The Blaumilch Canal".
12.
In 1952 Ephraim Kishon began writing a regular satirical column called "Had Gadya" in the daily Hebrew tabloid "Ma'ariv".
13.
Ephraim Kishon kept writing the column for about 30 years, while in the first two decades he published a new column almost every day.
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Ephraim Kishon's books have been translated into 37 languages and sold particularly well in Germany.
15.
Ephraim Kishon rejected the idea of universal guilt for the Holocaust.
16.
Ephraim Kishon was a lifelong chess enthusiast, and took an early interest in chess-playing computers.
17.
Ephraim Kishon wrote the comments to be humorous, but were carefully chosen to be relevant to chess and the position in the game.
18.
Ephraim Kishon was nominated twice for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and three times for a Golden Globe Award.
19.
Ephraim Kishon won two Golden Globe Best Foreign Language Film Awards, for Sallah Shabati, and The Policeman.