Ben Zyskowicz

Ben Berl Zyskowicz (born 24 May 1954) is a Finnish politician and member of parliament. Zyskowicz was chairman of the Finnish National Coalition Party's (Finnish: Kansallinen Kokoomus) parliamentary group from 1993 to 2006 and has been a member of parliament for the National Coalition Party since 1979. He was the first person of Jewish ancestry to be elected to the Finnish parliament. Following the parliamentary elections in April 2011, Zyskowicz was elected as the speaker of the parliament, for the duration of negotiations over the governing coalition.

Zyskowicz was born in Helsinki to Jewish parents. His father, Abram, was a Polish Sephardi Jew who had been in the Sachsenhausen and Majdanek concentration camp and moved as a refugee to Sweden, where he met Ben's mother, Ester, a Finnish Jew.

Abram and Ester Zyskowicz's first child Carmela was born in 1952, and the family moved to Finland the following year. Ben Zyskowicz was born in the following year. Abram Zyskowicz drowned on a swimming trip when Ben was six years old.

Carmela and Ben had Polish citizenship until 1959 when they were naturalized as Finnish citizens. The Zyskowicz family spoke Swedish at home, and Ben spoke Finnish at the Jewish school he attended.

Ben Zyskowicz has been married to Rahime Husnetdin-Zyskowicz, a member of the Finnish Tatar community, since 1982 and has two daughters, Daniela (1983) and Dinah (1985). He also abstains from alcohol and is known to be a regular at Café Strindberg – a popular celebrity-spotting location on Pohjoisesplanadi in the Helsinki city centre.

Zyskowicz is renowned for being the Finnish politician with the most difficult name to spell. In 2002, Ilta-Sanomat reported that only 16.6% of Finns knew how to correctly spell his name. In 2011 he was elected as the acting speaker of the Finnish parliament. Despite spelling instructions for his name being sent by text message to elected members of parliament, two voting ballots were disqualified for misspelling his name.