Ephraim Kishon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Ephraim Kishon (help·info) (Hebrew:אפרים קישון) (August 23, 1924 – January 29, 2005) was an Israeli satirist, dramatist, screenwriter, and film director.

Contents

[edit] Early biography

Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, as Ferenc Hoffmann, he studied sculpture and painting, and then began publishing humorous essays and writing for the stage. He was imprisoned by the Nazis in World War II 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 shooting every tenth person, passing him by. He later wrote in his book The Scapegoat, "They made a mistake—they left one satirist alive." He managed to escape while being transported to the Sobibor death camp in Poland, and hid the remainder of the war disguised as "Stanko Andras", a Slovakian laborer. After 1945 he changed his surname from Hoffmann to Kishon and returned to Hungary to study art and publish humorous plays. He emigrated to Israel in 1949 to escape the Communist regime, and an immigration officer gave him the name Ephraim Kishon.

Acquiring a mastery of Hebrew with remarkable speed, he started a regular satirical column in the easy-Hebrew daily, Omer, after only two years in the country. From 1952, he wrote the column "Had Gadya" in the daily Ma'ariv. Devoted largely to political and social satire but including essays of pure humour, it became one of the most popular columns in the country. His extraordinary inventiveness, both in the use of language and the creation of character, was applied also to the writing of innumerable sketches for theatrical revues.

[edit] Theatre

Some of his plays are:

  • His name walks in front of him (1953)
  • Ha-Ketubbah (1953)
  • Take the plug out (1968)
  • Oh, oh, Julia (1972)
  • Salah Shabati the musical. (1988)

His sketches and plays have been performed, in translation, on the stages and television networks of several countries.

[edit] Films

Kishon wrote, directed and produced numerous feature films, including:

  • Sallah Shabati (1964) which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, won Golden Globes for Best Actor (Chaim Topol) and Best Foreign Film, and the Best Script and Best Actor awards at the San Francisco Film Festival
  • Blaumilch Canal, also known as The Big Dig (1969)
  • Ha-Shoter Azoulay (literally, Officer Azoulay, translated as The Policeman for international release), (1971) which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and the Best Foreign Film Prize at the Barcelona Film Festival, won Best Director at the Monte Carlo Festival and the judges' prize at Atlanta. In Israel the movie is considered a classic.

which all enjoyed international distribution.

  • 'Arbinka' (1967).
  • 'The Fox in the Chicken Coop' (1978)

[edit] Writing

Collections of his humorous writings have appeared in Hebrew and in translation, the English translations including Look Back Mrs. Lot (1960), Noah's Ark, Tourist Class (1962), The Seasick Whale (1965), and two books on the Six-Day War and its aftermath, So Sorry We Won (1967), and Woe to the Victors (1969). Two collections of his plays have also appeared in Hebrew, Shemo Holekh Lefanav (1953) and Ma´arkhonim (1959).

His works have been translated into 37 languages and by far the most were sold in Germany. Kishon rejected the idea of universal guilt for the Holocaust and had many friends in Germany. Kishon said “It gives me great satisfaction to see the grandchildren of my executioners queueing up to buy my books.” Friedrich Torberg was his congenial translator to German, until he died in 1979; thereafter Kishon himself wrote in German. All in all he has written over 50 books.

[edit] Family

His first marriage (1946) to Eva (Chawa) Klamer ended in divorce. In 1959 he married his second wife Sara (née Lipovitz), who died in 2002. In 2003 he married Lisa Witasek. He had three children: Raphael (b. 1957), Amir (b. 1964), and Renana (b. 1968).

Kishon was a life-long chess enthusiast, and early on he took interest in chess-playing computers. In 1990, German chess computer manufacturer Hegener & Glaser together with Fidelity produced the Kishon Chesster, a chess computer distinguished by the spoken comments it would make during a game. Kishon wrote the comments to be humorous, but also carefully chosen to be relevant to chess and the position in the game.

In 1981 Kishon established a second home in the rural Swiss canton of Appenzell. He had become to feel somewhat estranged and unappreciated in Israel, believing that some native-born Israelis were against him because he was a Hungarian immigrant and that the literary establishment looked down on his best-selling "middle-brow" works. Kishon became increasingly conservative and continued to strongly support Zionism, and also publicly supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In March 2002 Kishon received the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement, the nation's highest civilian award. He commented "I've won the Israel Prize, even though I'm pro-Israel. It's almost like a state pardon. They usually give it to one of those liberals who love the Palestinians and hate the settlers."

Kishon died in Switzerland at age 80, apparently of a heart attack. His body was returned to Israel and buried in the artists' cemetery in Tel Aviv.

Wikinews has news related to:


[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../e/p/h/Ephraim_Kishon_594f.html"