István Kulcsár

István Kulcsár was born in 1901 in Budapest

Kulcsár was born in Budapest in 1901 to a Jewish family, under the surname Kraus. His father Miksa was a tailor. The anti-Jewish numerus clausus law kept him out of university at first.

He studied for one year at the veterinary college and then entered the medical faculty in Pécs. He earned his medical degree in 1926.

From 1926 to 1938 he worked as a gynecologist at a maternity hospital in Újpest, and he also ran a private practice in psychiatry and individual psychology. He was a student of Sándor Ferenczi and an active member of the Hungarian society of individual psychology. A supporter of the illegal Communist Party, he was tried in the 1930s and acquitted for lack of evidence.

During World War II he was sent to Jewish forced labor service and survived the war with false papers. Afterward he became a Zionist leader in Hungary, and in 1950 he immigrated to Israel with his wife and son.

In Israel he directed the new psychiatric hospital in Acre and later the psychiatric department at Sheba Hospital. He was a professor at Tel Aviv University until he retired in 1971. He died in Tel Aviv in 1986.