Roman Frister (1928–2015)

Roman Frister was born in Bielsko, Poland, the only child of a well-to-do Jewish family. His parents were Wilhelm and Franciszka Frister. He had a multi-cultural education, with books in German, Polish, and English. His parents intended to send him to boarding school in London after his bar mitzvah, but the Nazi invasion of Poland in World War II intervened. When the Jews were forced into the Bielsko ghetto, the Fristers stayed at home, then moved to Kraków, using forged identify papers. Eventually, they were caught and Roman witnessed his mother's murder when she was struck on the head with a pistol by a Nazi officer. Roman and his father were sent to several concentration and forced labor camps, including Plaszow, Mauthausen, Auschwitz, and Starachowice, where he saw his father die of typhoid fever. After surviving a death march in early 1945, Frister was released and settled in Wroclaw. In 1957, he emigrated to Israel and began a nearly 30-year career as an award-winning journalist and editor for the daily newspaper Ha'aretz. In 1990, he co-founded and later directed the Koteret School of Journalism in Tel Aviv. His published works included Impossible Love: Ascher Levi's Longing for Germany (2003), Itzhak Liebmann's Double Life (1974), and his autobiography, The Cap: The Price of a Life (published in English in 2000).