NYT, WSJ, WashPost and Others: Remembering George Berci, MD
Following the passing of surgical pioneer and Cedars-Sinai legend George Berci, MD, nearly a dozen publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, have published obituaries honoring his extraordinary life.
Berci passed away in Thousand Oaks, California, on Aug. 30. He was 103. His death was a tremendous loss for the Cedars-Sinai community, as Berci had remained actively engaged into his 100s as an educator and as senior director of Surgical Endoscopy and Innovation Research.
“He was hoping to give Grand Rounds in October,” Cristina Ferrone, MD, the Linda and Jim Lippman Chair in Surgical Oncology and chair of the Jim and Eleanor Randall Department of Surgery at Cedars-Sinai, told The Washington Post.
Berci’s contributions to medicine launched the field of minimally invasive surgery. The New York Times wrote, “his innovations were critical to the revolution in minimally invasive endoscopies and laparoscopies, which dramatically reduced the need for surgeons to make large incisions.”
Bruce Gewertz, MD, the H & S Nichols Distinguished Chair in Surgery, surgeon-in-chief, and executive vice dean of Faculty and Clinical Affairs at Cedars-Sinai, told The Wall Street Journal that in the 1970s, when Berci was developing these new techniques, minimally invasive—or keyhole—surgery, “was a very hard concept for people to understand… We didn’t believe it could be done safely.”
In addition to sharing Berci’s commanding influence on the field of surgery, these articles outlined his early life and his experiences as a Jewish person in Europe during World War II.
The Wall Street Journal shared more details of the horrors he faced during this time, writing, “in September 1942, he was ordered to report for work on a Jewish labor brigade building defensive fortifications for the German military. He subsisted on meager portions of bread, potatoes and mystery meat. In mid-1944, he and other members of the brigade were herded into a train apparently bound for concentration camps. When the train stopped in Budapest, air raid sirens were shrieking. Berci and others took advantage of the confusion to escape.”
Once the war was over, Berci earned his medical degree from the University of Szeged in 1950, which began his groundbreaking career in medicine. He joined Cedars-Sinai in 1967, where he continued to develop innovative surgical advancements and taught generations of surgeons. In 1992, he received Cedars-Sinai’s Pioneer in Medicine Award.
Other publications that paid tribute to Berci’s life and legacy include The Boston Globe, MSN.com, Becker's Hospital Review, The Telegraph, Beverly Press, Beverly Hills Courier, The Week Magazine and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.