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Dr. George Berci, a Holocaust survivor, is a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
When Dr. Bruce Gewertz arrived from Chicago 16 years ago to work at Cedars-Sinai, he saw his new neighbor. “When I got here,” Cedars’ chief surgeon said, “there was an 85-year-old man in the office next to me and I thought, ‘Well, how long can this go on?'”
To this day, it is not known. Dr. George Berci, Holocaust survivor and surgical pioneer, is still in the office next door. And last week he turned 101 years old. “Until COVID,” Gewertz commented, “it was not uncommon for me to arrive at the office at 7 am to find George already at work. His achievements in the last 20 years of his life are probably as important as those in the first 80”.
Berci arrived at work at 7 am on Tuesday; there were a couple of meetings on the agenda. She told me that she now goes to the site in person for about two days and works from her home the rest of the week, fielding inquiries from other doctors and communicating with colleagues around the world.
Looking at him, there isn’t much physical evidence that the doctor is already in his second century. His shoulders have rounded a bit, but he walks with a good pace (in bouncy two-tone lace-up shoes), ducking through secret hospital passageways to get here and there. His eyes are clear, his mind is still sharp.
© (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
At 101, Dr. George Berci of Cedars-Sinai has no plans to slow down. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
Part of that is sheer luck; Due to some combination of genetics, lifestyle, and circumstances, certain people age more slowly. And part of it is an invigorating potion of passion and purpose.
Berci puts on his white coat and goes to work because the task he loves to do is not over.
But to be completely honest, he wasn’t in a very good mood when we met. The news from the Ukraine was horrifying to him and especially disturbing, given his own suffering at the hands of brutal dictators. “I hope that somehow this will improve,” reflected Berci, who recalled the German and Russian aggression that at the time tore families apart and cost millions of lives. “We have to help them,” he said, thinking of the Ukrainian masses who fled their troubled country.
© (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
An innovator of surgical techniques, Dr. George Berci was hired by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 1967 and has been there ever since (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times). (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
Born in Hungary and raised there and in Austria, Berci was forcibly taken to a labor camp with other Jews in 1942 and endured the misery of back-breaking manual labor while virtually starving to death. Two years later, during the Allied forces’ bombardment of Budapest, concentration camp guards were distracted long enough for him and other prisoners to escape. Berci worked underground and risked his life in an operation that created and delivered fake IDs to Jews in hiding.
When the war ended, he picked up the violin that he had played since he was a child and planned to make a career in music. But his mother refused that idea. Berci’s father and grandfather had died and left the family destitute, so the woman thought of something more financially promising than music: she wanted him to go to medical school.
Berci still loves music, but he admits that he is eternally grateful for his mother’s decision.
He made surgery his specialty and was working in a Budapest hospital in 1956 when Russian forces crushed an anti-communist uprising and killed thousands. Hundreds of bloodied victims arrived at the medical center, and when the drama died down, Berci began planning his escape from Europe.
A fellowship took him to Australia, where he focused on ways to improve surgical technique. His innovations caught the attention of Cedars-Sinai, which recruited him in 1967. There, he began developing endoscopic and laparoscopic techniques, now widely used to diagnose and operate diseases of the kidneys, colon, and gallbladder and plus.
Before, a surgeon cut the body. But with the new tools, the work is less invasive and is done through small incisions or holes. Berci had studied mechanical engineering as a young man and helped develop the small camera used in these procedures, which allows surgeons a clear view of the inside of the body as they work.
The doctor wrote dozens of books and scientific articles on all this. His latest volume on the history of biliary surgery, “No Stones Left Unturned” (Not a stone left unturned), written in collaboration with Dr. Frederick Greene, was a labor of love that involved years of research.
In large part, Berci said, what drives him is a desire to lower health care costs and reach more patients. Less invasive and more effective surgeries mean shorter hospital stays and quicker recoveries.
“There is no question that his ideas and work have changed the face of surgery,” Dr. L. Michael Brunt reflected in 2013, after producing a documentary on the life and career of the pioneer. The American Society of Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons now gives out a lifetime achievement award called Berci, even as the doctor himself competes for his achievement. “He consistently attends all of our conferences and makes compelling references; he is remarkable,” Gewertz highlighted.
Berci’s current obsession is educating the next generation of surgeons and their mentors on perfecting gallbladder surgery so that all stones are removed and no follow-up surgery is necessary. “He created a coalition of all the experienced gallbladder surgeons in the country to make that an expectation of our training programs,” Gewertz said.
Berci’s daughter, Katherine DeFevere, said her father has always been able to rise “above the horrors and figure it all out… He’s the most resourceful person I’ve ever met and has the most amazing coping mechanism, the drive to survive.” and reinvent himself.
But that can be a challenge as you get older, Berci told me. The doctor is concerned and disappointed in both the state of the world and the degree of political division in the United States, and he continues to mourn the death of his wife three years ago.
“If you’re alone, it’s something else,” Berci said, and while he still has his beloved Italian-made violin, “it doesn’t work as well with 100-year-old bones.”
But the specialist gets out of bed at 5:30 am, and if he doesn’t go for a walk, he goes to a gym.
He also watches what he eats, doesn’t drink alcohol and is a fan of the Lakers. And he continues, at 101 years old, always wanting to get down to work.
Any plans for retirement? I asked him.
He answered flatly, as if the very idea were absurd: “The answer is: don’t do it.”
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This article was first published in Los Angeles Times in Spanish.