[3] Zyskowicz was born in Helsinki as the son of a Polish Jewish father, Abram Zyskowicz (1917–1960), who had been in the Sachsenhausen and Majdanek concentration camps and moved as a refugee to Sweden, where he met Ben's mother, Ester Fridman (1920–2002), a Finnish Jew.

[4][5] Abram and Ester Zyskowicz's first child Carmela was born in 1952, and the family moved to Finland the following year.

[7] 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 was known to be a regular at Café Strindberg which is a popular celebrity-spotting location on Pohjoisesplanadi in the Helsinki city centre.

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.