Ephraim Kishon was born Ferenc Hoffmann in Budapest in 1924, the son of a
middle-class Jewish family and as such was refused admission to Hungary's Nazi-controlled
university. So he became a goldsmith. During the Second World War he was imprisoned
by the Nazis in a number of concentration camps. Kishon's chess playing skills
helped to keep him alive, at least in one camp whose commandant was in search
of an opponent. In another camp a German officer lined up Jewish inmates and
shot dead every tenth person, passing him by. “They made the mistake
of letting a satirist live,” Kishon later remarked. Later while being
transported to the Sobibor death camp in Poland, Kishon managed to escape.
He survived the remainder of the war in disguise as “Stanko Andras”,
a Slovakian labourer.
In 1945 Kishon returned to Hungary to study art, and began publishing humorous
plays for the stage. But he did not get on with the new Communist regime and
in May 1949 migrated to the new state of Israel. There he picked up Hebrew
very quickly and, just two years after his arrival, began publishing stories
and newspaper columns in that language. He also wrote plays and feature films,
which won national and international acclaim. For his films he received three
Golden Globe prizes and two Oscars.
But it was his books that brought the greatest success. He published over
50 in Hebrew, and a total of 700 in 37 different languages. They were almost
always on the bestseller list. 43 million copies were sold world wide, half
a century of writing.
On a personal note
From
the late sixties on Ephraim Kishon's books were translated into German, by
an Austrian writer named Friedrich Torberg. This was a marriage made in heaven,
since Torberg's renderings wonderfully preserved the light ironical Jewish
style in a language that for a long time had lost touch with this kind of humour.
Friedrich Torberg died in 1979, but by then Kishon had mastered the language
well enough to write in German himself.
The success was without parallel. Throughout the seventies and eighties Kishon's
books were at the top of all German bestseller lists, people from all circles
of life presented each other with the latest volumes for birthdays and at Christmas.
I remember reading every book Kishon wrote, always in German, because I thought
Torberg's translations were far superior to the English ones I encountered.
We were weaned on his satire. Who can forget the story of the mathematics professor
emigrating to Israel. Since he cannot get by on his teacher's salary he starts
selling items from the "care" packages he receives from relatives
back in America to the students in his class. When the school director tells
him that walking around the campus with a hawker's tray crying "Hershey
bars, peanuts, chocolates" was not compatible with his academic status,
he takes the only logical decision: to stop teaching and go into campus vending
full time. Or the story in which an Egyptian spy, posing as an Israeli carpenter,
is exposed when he uses all three screws on a door hinge. No Israeli carpenter,
in historical time has done that – they either use the top two holes
or the top and bottom one. Never all three.
One of my favourites tells of Ephraim and his friend Jossele sitting at a
café when a delivery truck loses a large cardboard box. The two grab
it and eagerly examine its contents. When it turns out to contain thousands
of little pin flags advertising cod liver oil (or something, I don't remember
the details), Ephraim is very disappointed. Not so Jossele, who gasps: "My
God, we are rich!" He gets two tin cans, cuts a slit in the top and the
two start pinning the flags onto the lapels of passers-by. The story ends in
them finding a printing press in Haifa that will produce 10,000 new flags for
them at a reasonable price. The story taught us a very important lesson: opportunities
will come, to everyone. One must just be prepared to recognize them.
When the first chess computers were produced Kishon rediscovered the passion
of his youth. He soon had a fair-sized collection of the nicest sets, and even
set aside a room in his house where he could have them all running at the same
time. Since I was the editor of a computer
chess magazine at the time we came into contact. Kishon regularly wrote
letters to the magazine, each in his distinctive style, and even visited some
of the computer chess tournaments we periodically staged.
Ephraim Kishon with his own chess computer in 1990
During this time he also made contact with the leading German chess computer
manufacturer, Hegener & Glaser, and undertook to design his own chess machine.
It was the Kishon Chesster, built by Fidelity (a H&G daughter)
in 1990. The computer ran on a 3.6 MHz 6502 (eight-bit) processor with 32 KB
of ROM and 8 KB of RAM. The programmers were Dan and Kathe Spracklen. The set
had pressure-sensitive squares and signalled its moves with a coordinate system
of 16 LEDs placed around the board. The openings book had 16,000 moves and
the playing strength was around 1800 Elo.
The distinctive feature of Kishon Chesster was that the computer had a fairly
large vocabulary of spoken chess comments, which it uttered under certain circumstances
during the game. Naturally the commentary was humorous, but Kishon had also
made sure that it was not gratuitously so. The remarks were chess relevant
and had been carefully crafted by Kishon himself.
A 1991 ad for the talking Kishon Chesster
I met Ephraim a number of times during this period, often during events or
talk shows involving computer chess. In real life he was as charming and funny
as in his books. On long drives or at dinners he would tell us stories or simply
conduct witty banter, never at a loss for a whimsical thought or an ironical
turn of phrase. Sometimes the encounters were quite poignant. I met him during
the first Gulf War and he spent an evening describing very graphically what
it was like to be under Scud attack in Tel Aviv. What it was like to hear the
screech and thud, to fear a possible chemical warhead, or something even worse.
And what it was like to know that your country could put an end to the assault
in a matter of hours, but could not do so for diplomatic reasons.
My last contact with Ephraim was two years ago, when I showed him the chatter
function of Fritz, which has some similarities with the Kishon Chesster talking
function. He was fascinated, especially since Fritz had no limitation with
regard to memory or the volume of remarks it could solve. Also the Fritz chatter
system allows a very fine differentiation of the chessboard events that can
trigger a remark. Kishon was determined to compose his own set of remarks and
contacted us a number of times to work out technical details. Unfortunately
the project did not materialise, perhaps because he was a Macintosh person,
while Fritz lives in the Windows world.
A final memory of the great satirist was a couple of years ago, when a young
journalist cautiously broached the subject of Kishon's advanced age. His reply
was as follows (I quote as exactly as I can remember): "You know, I have
done a lot of thinking about old age, and I have come to the conclusion that
it has no advantages, no positive side to it. None at all. Except one –
a single advantage. You can say 'I have made it so far – how about you?'.
We will miss you sadly, Ephraim.
Links
