Talking with Dr. Gad Frishman
“For me, this book is first and foremost a legacy for the next generations. I want my children and grandchildren to know not only what my parents survived…”
First of all, would you introduce yourself?
My name is Gad (Gady) Frishman. I was born and raised in Israel, the son of Bence and Ibolyka Frishman, both born in Hungary and Holocaust survivors. My academic background is in chemical engineering and the medical sciences, and my PhD is in analytical chemistry. I spent most of my professional life in scientific research and public service, and since retiring I have devoted much of my time to preserving my family’s story and to Holocaust remembrance.
You’ve just finished a book on your family history. What motivated you to write this memoir?
“I was born in Israel, so naturally I look at this family story from the perspective of someone who grew up here, in a life my parents succeeded in building after the Holocaust.
From that perspective, I would say that the main motivation for writing this memoir was my children and grandchildren. I have four children and nine grandchildren so far – and hopefully more to come – and I wanted them to know where they come from, to be familiar with their family roots, and to understand the long journey that made our family what it is today.
I grew up in a home where the Holocaust was hardly spoken about. My parents wanted to protect us and give us a normal, happy childhood, so they kept much of what they had experienced to themselves. As a child, and even later, I did not really dare to ask. By the time I understood how important those questions were, many of the answers were no longer available.
That created a strong sense of responsibility in me. I felt that if I did not make the effort to reconstruct and preserve their story, an important part of our family history might disappear. So, I began searching through archives, museums, documents, photographs and other records, trying to piece together as much as I could.
For me, this book is first and foremost a legacy for the next generations. I want my children and grandchildren to know not only what my parents survived, but also what they built afterward – how they came from persecution and loss in Hungary, became doctors in Israel, raised a family, created a new life, and made their own contribution to the building of the State of Israel.
The history of my mother, Dr. Ibolyka Kornis Frishman, and the family she grew up with in Budapest, I could learn mainly through documents and photographs that I found. With my father, Dr. Bence Frishman, who grew up in Győr, I was more fortunate: he had left a filmed testimony for the Spielberg project. But even that testimony remained closed to me for many years. I only found the courage to watch it twenty years after his death.
In many ways, this book is the result of finally opening that door – finding the courage to confront that period of our family history and accepting the responsibility to preserve their story and pass it on to the next generations.”
Is the book freely available, or have only members of your family received a copy?
“The book was written first and foremost for my family. My parents had three sons, and today the family includes ten grandchildren and twenty-four great-grandchildren. I wanted all of them to have this story in their hands.
I gave a copy of the book to every member of the family at a special family dinner. We sat together around a beautifully set white table and enjoyed wonderful Hungarian food, just like my mother used to prepare for us for Shabbat dinners. It felt less like a formal book launch and more like a family celebration — a small ceremony of memory, food, stories and roots.
I also told the younger generation something quite simple: keep the book on your bookshelf. You may not feel the need to read it now, but one day you may suddenly want to know more — who your family was, where they came from, what they went through, and how all of this became part of your family story. When that day comes, the book will be there waiting for you.
So, the book began as a very personal family legacy. Its first audience was my own family. But over time, many friends asked me for a copy, and of course I was very happy to give them one and dedicate it personally to them. Nowadays, I also give talks and tell the story at memorial gatherings held around the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day. For me, this is another way of keeping the memory alive and passing it on to others.
The book is written in Hebrew, and the English title is From Yellow Star to White Coat.”
How far can you trace back your dad’s and your mother’s ancestors in Hungary or elsewhere?
“I was able to trace both sides of the family back several generations, although not equally far and not with the same amount of detail.
On my father’s side, the family story is centered around Győr, where my father, Dr. Bence Frischmann, was born and grew up. His father, Frigyes (Efraim) Frischmann, was born in 1892 in Deutschkreutz, in the Burgenland region, and his mother, Ella Gross, was born in Vienna (1896).
My grandfather Friedrich came from an exceptionally large family. He was one of thirteen children, so he had twelve brothers and sisters. I succeeded to trace most of them. Looking at the family tree today makes the scale of that loss very personal – these are not just numbers, but an entire extended family that almost disappeared.
On my grandmother Ella’s side, I was also able to trace her brothers, including Ezra Gross and Heiny Gross. Ezra was a teacher and lived in Debrecen, Heiny was active in the Zionist movement in Győr and immigrated to Palestine before the war.
On my mother’s side, I was able to go further, mainly thanks to the remarkably detailed Hungarian archives. My maternal grandfather, Ferenc (Efraim) Kornis, was born in 1883 in the village of Mernye, near Lake Balaton. His parents were Dr. Benő Kornis and Antonia, née Lövinger. I was also able to identify my grandfather’s brothers and reconstruct part of that extended branch of the family.
My maternal grandmother, Katalin Kohn, was born in 1896 in Solymár, near Budapest. Her parents were Ignatz Kohn and Fani, or Éva, née Weisz. Through the archives I also discovered her brother and sister and their families, who lived very close to one another in Budapest. Remarkably, even my great-grandmother survived the Holocaust at the age of eighty.
One of the things that surprised me during this research was how much could still be discovered. The Hungarian archives preserve very detailed records – births, marriages, deaths, addresses and education – and people who had almost disappeared from our family memory gradually came back to life. That was one of the most moving parts of writing the book: not only tracing a family tree, but turning names on documents into members of my family again.”
Can you recall your father’s memories of his and his family’s life until his emigration from Győr?
“Yes. My father left a very detailed account of his childhood and youth, and much of the first part of the book is based on his own testimony. He was born in Győr in 1922, the eldest of three children. His sister Miriam, or Miri, was born two years later, and his younger brother Gyula — Yehuda, whom everyone called Jussi — was born six years after him. His parents worked very hard. His father, Frigyes Frischmann, was a merchant who owned a small soft-drink factory, a grocery store and a coal business, while his mother, Ella, worked in the shop. The family was religious and observant, but at the same time deeply Zionist. They kept Shabbat and kosher, went to synagogue, and even sang Shir Hama’alot to the melody of Hatikvah.
Some of my father’s warmest memories were connected with family traditions. He often spoke about the cholent his mother prepared for Shabbat and about the large family gatherings at Passover. Although he spent several years studying away from home, Passover was the time when the extended family came together again. I think this helps explain why, later in life, keeping the whole family together around the Seder table became so important to him.
But there was another side to his childhood. The family lived in a non-Jewish neighborhood in Győr, and my father remembered encountering antisemitism for the first time when he was only about five years old. Later, as he walked to the Orthodox Jewish school with other Jewish children, insults from people in the street became almost routine.
At the age of ten he was sent to the Jewish high school in Debrecen, where he lived with his uncle Ezra Gross and aunt Hanna. He missed home terribly, but he also absorbed a strong Hebrew and Zionist atmosphere there. Later he spent some time in an Orthodox religious school in Slovakia, but that way of life did not suit him, so he returned to Győr and continued his secular education. From a young age, he dreamed of becoming a doctor.
By the late 1930s, life was changing rapidly. Anti-Jewish laws restricted education and employment, and my father was unable to enter university. He studied automobile mechanics and electricity for a while, later trained as a teacher in Budapest, and returned to Győr in 1942 to teach in the same Jewish elementary school he had attended as a child.
At the same time, Zionism became increasingly important in his life. His mother and her brothers, Ezra Gross and Heiny Gross, had also been active Zionists, and my father said that he had absorbed Zionism almost with his mother’s milk. He also spoke with great respect about Dr. Emil Roth, a Zionist rabbi in Győr who gathered young Jewish intellectuals around him. My father took part in his discussion group, where they studied Hebrew, literature and Zionist thought. Emil Roth clearly had a strong influence on him.
Then everything changed. On October 4, 1943, my father was drafted into the Hungarian Jewish forced-labor service and reported to Komárom. During the German occupation, his family in Győr was forced into the ghetto and later deported. Most of them did not survive. My father himself went through forced labor, Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt before he was liberated in May 1945.
When he finally returned to Győr, the city of his childhood was almost unrecognizable to him. Their apartment had been taken over by others. He stood outside and could still see the family chandelier through the open window. As my father himself described that moment, ‘Everything was the same, and yet nothing was the same.’ His grandmother, his parents, his younger brother Jussi and most of his friends were gone.
For three months, from June to September 1945, he worked for the Joint Distribution Committee, helping other survivors rebuild their lives. Then he decided that his future was no longer in Győr. He moved to Budapest to pursue the dream he had carried since childhood — to study medicine. It was there, at medical school, that he later met my mother, Ibolyka Kornis.
So, when I think of my father’s memories of Győr, I think of two very different worlds: first, a warm childhood filled with family, Jewish tradition and Zionist dreams — and then the destruction of almost everything he had known. Among the many stories I discovered while researching the book, there is one I learned only recently that, for me, captures this transition in a very personal way.
On June 6, 1944, my father managed to leave the forced-labor camp and return home to Győr to see his family. To do so, he obtained a permit for a medical examination and altered it so that he traveled home and remain away overnight. By an extraordinary coincidence, that same day became the D-Day, the Allied landing in Normandy – one of the major turning points of the Second World War.
When the time came for my father to return to the camp, he asked his father to let him take his younger brother Jussi with him. He said, ‘Give me Jussi, Father. I will take care of him.’ His father refused and told him that he had to return to the army, while Jussi would remain with the family. My father never saw his younger brother again. Jussi was later murdered in Auschwitz at the age of fourteen.
Years later, I learned that my father carried a sense of guilt with him for the rest of his life because he had not insisted on taking Jussi with him, even though, realistically, there was probably nothing he could have done to save him. For me, this story says something very deep about my father — about his sense of responsibility for his family, and about the emotional burden he carried throughout his life.
Leaving Győr was therefore much more than moving from one city to another. He was leaving behind the world of his childhood, much of his family, and everything that had once given him a sense of home. Moving to Budapest and beginning medical school marked the beginning of rebuilding his life from what remained.”
When did actually your parents move to Israel? What were the main reasons for their emigration?
“My parents arrived in Israel on September 27, 1950, aboard the ship Komemiyut. But their journey to Israel had actually begun more than a year earlier. They left Hungary on May 15, 1949, while they were still medical students, with one year remaining before completing their studies.
The strongest reason behind their decision was Zionism and the desire to build a new life in the newly established State of Israel. My father had been involved in Zionist activity since his youth, and after the establishment of Israel in 1948, that dream became something real and achievable. My mother had grown up in a less Zionist environment, but she fully shared his vision. Their original plan was to complete their medical studies first and then make aliyah, because they believed they could contribute more to the new country as qualified doctors. This was especially meaningful at a time when Israel still had no established medical school able to train enough physicians, and the young country was facing a serious shortage of doctors.
At the same time, the political situation in Hungary was changing rapidly. Independent Jewish and Zionist activity was becoming increasingly difficult, and my father’s involvement in the Jewish Students’ Association placed him under growing pressure. It became clear to them that their opportunities to continue their studies and pursue the future they wanted in Hungary were becoming very limited. So, the decision to leave was not only about moving away from something — it was also about moving toward the life they had already chosen.
Their journey was not simple. From Hungary they reached Bratislava, and later Vienna and Graz. Their greatest concern was how to complete medical school. Since Israel could not yet accept them into the final year of their studies, they eventually found a solution at the University of Munich, which recognized their previous medical education. Within about a year, both of them completed their medical degrees.
Only then were they able to fulfill their dream, On September 1950, they arrived in Israel with very few possessions, but with two medical diplomas, enormous determination, and a clear sense of purpose.
For me, that is the inspiring part of their story. Even after everything they had experienced, they did not define their future by what they had lost. They chose to complete their education, come to Israel, contribute as doctors where they were badly needed, build a family, and take part in building a new country and a new life.”
How did your family’s life begin in Israel? There were certainly initial difficulties, how did your parents and yourself manage to overcome them?
“Our family’s life in Israel began very modestly. Israel itself was still a very young country, living under the austerity regime known as the tzena, with food rationing and shortages. They were immigrants, Holocaust survivors, and young doctors who had to build both a professional life and a family almost from the beginning.
Professionally, they were fortunate to be needed. Both of them began working at the government hospital in Sarafand, later renamed Assaf Harofeh. My mother, Ibolyka Kornis, went into pediatrics. My father began in pathology, but soon realized that his real interest was gynecology and obstetrics. In 1951 he was drafted into the Israeli army, completed officers’ training, and served as a doctor in the Air Force. For him, after everything he had experienced in forced labor and the concentration camps, becoming an officer in the army of the Jewish state had enormous emotional meaning.
There were certainly difficulties. Like many survivor-doctors who came to Israel at that time, they had to adapt to a new language, a new medical system, unfamiliar diseases and very different working conditions. The country itself had limited resources and was struggling to absorb large numbers of immigrants.
But my parents were very determined people. They worked hard, continued their professional training and gradually established themselves. My father specialized in gynecology and obstetrics, and my mother in pediatrics. In 1956 they were able to buy a small house in Givatayim. That house became the center of our family life for decades.
They had three sons, and each of us later built his own career and life. For my parents, that was a tremendous source of pride. Family was always at the center of their lives.
So, I would say they overcame the initial difficulties through a combination of hard work, professional commitment, family solidarity and a very strong sense of purpose. They did not spend much time looking backward. They concentrated on building – careers, a home, a family and a future in Israel.
And from my own perspective as a child, that may be the most important thing they gave us. We did not grow up feeling that we were children of victims. We grew up in a stable, loving home, with parents who had survived an unimaginable past but chose to invest their energy in life. In that sense, their success was not only professional. The family they built was perhaps their greatest victory.”
Family ties to Győr have not been severed. Your father was one of the organizers of the 1989 “Győr reunion” in Israel. What motivated him to co-organize this reunion?
“I think my father’s main motivation was his strong sense of responsibility and his instinct to help. Throughout his life, when he felt that something needed to be done, he became involved. After retiring from hospital management, he devoted more time to Holocaust remembrance and to preserving the memory of the Jewish community of Győr.
His activity in this field was mainly outside our home. He did not speak much with us about his own suffering during the Holocaust, although his involvement in commemoration was never a secret. We knew that he was active in maintaining contact with survivors, organizing memorial projects and preserving the history of the community. I think the best way to explain what motivated him is through his own words at the 1989 Győr reunion. In his closing remarks, he said:
‘Our parents and grandparents, for generations, built their homes with dignity and hard work and developed the city they considered their own, for the benefit of all its inhabitants. It turned out that they were wrong, and their mistake cost them their lives. If we want to build a safe future for ourselves and for our children, we must remember and remind others of this poisoned past. This poison has not disappeared; it still exists around us. We must see it, remain aware of it at all times, and spread the appropriate antidote at all times. This is our daily duty.’ (translated from his 1989 speech)
For me, these words explain his motivation better than anything else. The reunion was not simply a gathering of old friends. He wanted to preserve the story of a community that had almost disappeared and to pass that memory on to the next generations. For him, remembrance was not only about looking back at the past. It was a responsibility toward the future – and, in his own words, a way of spreading the antidote.”
You also attended the Jewish Roots in Győr World Reunion held in Győr from 4 to 7 July 2024. Why and what is your most vivid memory of the event?
“Yes, I attended the Jewish Roots in Győr World Reunion in July 2024, and for me it was much more than attending a conference. I felt a personal obligation to my parents — and especially to my father — to return to the place where he was born, where he grew up, and where so much of his identity was formed.
As I already mentioned, one of the main reasons I wrote the book was my sense of responsibility toward the next generations. I want my children and grandchildren to know, remember and appreciate what my parents went through, and what they later succeeded in building in their new life. Going to Győr was part of that same commitment. I felt that if I really wanted to understand my father’s story, I had to walk through the streets he had known, see where he had lived and studied, meet members of the descendant community, and connect his memories to real places.
That is exactly what happened. I went with my wife Anat, my brother Udi and my sister-in-law Dorit. We found the street where my father had lived, located the site of my grandfather’s grocery store, and walked the route my father had taken as a child from home to school. For a few moments, I felt that I was literally walking in his footsteps.
But one of the most powerful moments came in the courtyard of the magnificent synagogue of Győr. There, I stood beside the tall black stone memorial on which the names of 381 Jewish children of Győr who were murdered in Auschwitz are engraved. There, I found the name of my uncle, Gyula Frischmann. He was only fourteen years old when he was murdered. Seeing his name carved into that stone was a deeply emotional moment for me. He was no longer only a name in the family story; suddenly he felt present before me, among the children of his city who never had the chance to grow up.
The final memorial ceremony at the Jewish cemetery was also especially moving. After four very intense days, we gathered to remember the Jewish community that had almost disappeared, planted memorial trees and prayed together that such a tragedy would never happen again.
What stayed with me most was the feeling that the story was no longer only my father’s story. It had become my story as well. I felt closer to him there than I had for many years. But just as important, I also felt that I had connected to the wider Jewish community of Győr — to its descendants, its memory and its shared story. In that sense, the reunion helped me not only to understand my own family story, but also to feel part of something larger.
I would also like to express my deep gratitude to Mr. Peter Krausz for the initiative, the organization and the extraordinary execution of this unforgettable reunion. Without his dedication, energy and commitment, this experience would not have been possible.”
Tell us about your life, your schooling and your career. Your wife? Your children are now adults – what are they doing? Do you have any grandchildren yet?
“I grew up in Givatayim, Israel, and studied chemical engineering. I also hold a PhD in chemistry. I spent 36 years in public service and research, most of them at the Israel Institute for Biological Research. My last position was Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Public Security.
Today I am retired, but I remain very active as a volunteer, particularly in Holocaust remembrance and in preserving the story of Israel’s rebirth. I am also involved in several social organizations that promote education and projects aimed at reducing social gaps.
I am married to Anat, and we have four children. Our eldest son, Sagi, has a PhD in physics; he is married to Shira, and they have three children. Our daughter, Maayan, is a high-school physical education teacher; she is married to Gili, and they have four children. Our third son is a doctor at Sheba Medical Center, specializing in oral and maxillofacial surgery.
Our youngest son, Yoni, has just begun medical school at Semmelweis University in Budapest. For me, that is an extraordinary closing of a circle, because my parents met and married while studying medicine at the very same university in Budapest.”
Do you think your children and grandchildren will still remember your roots in Győr and Hungary?
“Time is passing, Israel is facing major challenges, the world is changing rapidly, and the younger generation is growing up in a very different reality. I cannot know exactly how deeply my children and grandchildren will connect to our family roots in Győr and Hungary, but I can do my part: to tell the story, preserve it, and make sure they know where their family came from.
Their identity is Israeli, but I do not believe our roots in Győr can or should be disconnected from that identity. They are part of the family story that explains where we came from, what was lost, and what was later rebuilt.
My father expressed this very clearly in his testimony. His message to the generations that would follow was: ‘Know what happened, and preserve what we have.’ He also said that if he had succeeded in showing the difference between Jewish life before the establishment of the State of Israel and life after its establishment, then he had achieved his purpose.
That message is very meaningful to me. Remembering Győr is very important, but preserving Israel as the national home of the Jewish people is even more important. When my wife and I look back at our parents, we are grateful for what they endured and for what they built here.
Today, Israel is once again facing very serious challenges and difficult questions about its future. I do not take that future for granted. But when I look at our children and grandchildren, I believe that, just as previous generations found the strength to rebuild after enormous hardship, we too will find the way forward. We were fortunate to inherit what our parents built, and we have a responsibility to preserve it, strengthen it, and pass it on to the generations that follow.”
Interview conducted Hungarian by P. Krausz