Ephraim Kishon, 80; Humorist Used Biting Satire to Draw Attention to Issues Facing Israel

Best-selling humorist Ephraim Kishon, a Holocaust survivor who captured Israel’s foibles in biting satires, has died. He was 80.

Kishon, who won the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement in 2003, died Saturday at his home in Switzerland of an apparent heart attack, said his son, Rafi.

“Beyond any doubt, Ephraim Kishon was one of the most prominent creative artists of Israeli culture,” Israeli President Moshe Katsav told Israel Radio on Sunday.

“I don’t think anyone could compete with him in expressing the process of absorption” into Israeli society, Katsav said.

Kishon helped set the tone of Israel’s national discourse by using laughter to draw attention to social problems facing the nation.

His 1964 play “Salah Shabati,” later made into a movie, lampoons Israeli society for making life hard for new immigrants.

In one scene, a North African newcomer is mocked by a more seasoned immigrant from Europe for his supposed lack of culture.

A friend for decades, actor Chaim Topol -- who won international fame in the leading role of the 1971 movie “Fiddler on the Roof” -- said Kishon’s satirical column in the Maariv daily newspaper reached the hearts and minds of “simple readers and decision-makers.”

Born Ferenc Hoffmann in Budapest, Hungary, on Aug. 24, 1924, Kishon narrowly escaped death in the Holocaust. In one Nazi camp, a German officer lined up Jewish inmates and shot one in 10 dead, passing him by. He later managed to flee the Nazis as he was en route to the Sobibor death camp.

Kishon later wrote of the experience “They made a mistake, they left one satirist alive.”

Immigrating to Israel in 1949, he changed his name and became one of the new country’s most revered writers of humorous but barbed essays and later wrote scripts for some of its most iconic films, among them “Salah Shabati.”

Kishon, who was popular in Europe, particularly in German-speaking countries, had an ambivalent relationship with Israel, his son said.

The author considered the creation of Israel the greatest miracle of the 20th century, but often felt unfairly treated by Israeli literary critics and intellectuals, Rafi Kishon said.

The younger Kishon said his father was pleased with his success in Europe, particularly Germany.

“He said, ‘This is a great feeling, that the children of my hangmen are my admirers,’ ” Rafi Kishon said.

In addition to his son Rafi, he is survived by two other children and his third wife, Lisa.

Kishon’s body was flown to Israel on Sunday for burial in Tel Aviv today.