In October 1942, George Berci, then George Bleier, was ordered to report for forced labor. Along with 1,600 young men, the 21-year-old was transported from Budapest to a camp near Bereck, Hungary, near the Romanian border. During the day, in his assigned group of 400 men, George was marched into the mountains, more than an hour\u2019s walk, where he dug anti-tank trenches from sunup to sundown, especially arduous in winter when the ground was frozen. At night he slept with his group in a large, cold cement bunker, using small branches he had collected in the forest as a mattress.<\/p>\n
![\"George](\"http:\/\/orenu.co.il\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/George-Berci-300x185.jpg\")
On one occasion, for some arbitrary transgression, Hungarian guards tied his hands behind his back and hoisted him up with a rope that had been thrown over a heavy branch. His feet lifted off the ground, and his arms bore all his body weight. George believes he became semi-conscious. \u201cI couldn\u2019t lift my arms for days,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n
George Berci was born on March 14, 1921, in Szeged, Hungary, the only child of Alexander and Ella Bleier.\u00a0 The following year, his father was hired as the assistant conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and the family, including George, his parents, maternal grandparents, uncle and great-aunt, moved into a two-room apartment in Vienna.<\/p>\n
George\u2019s father left for India in 1924, while the family remained in Vienna. George was made to begin violin lessons at age 4, and by the time he was 10 he was playing concertos.<\/p>\n
In 1935, the political climate in Vienna shifted to the right. With no explanation, George\u2019s non-Jewish friends stopped associating with him. And in his public school classrooms, he and other Jewish students were relegated to the back row.<\/p>\n
That same year, his maternal uncle, who supported the family, lost his job with Electrolux in Austria, but was offered a position in Stockholm. George\u2019s grandmother, however, vetoed the idea, and in 1936 the family moved to Budapest. George\u2019s parents were divorced by this time.<\/p>\n
At 16, forbidden to attend public high school, George was accepted into a private Jewish school. He financed his education by washing cars on weekend evenings, even in winter, and graduated in 1939.<\/p>\n
Unable to attend university, George apprenticed for one year in an electrical shop and then worked for two years as a mechanical engineer.<\/p>\n
George\u2019s uncle was called into the military around 1940 and later killed in Russia. His father disappeared in 1941.<\/p>\n
After spending more than two years at the labor camp near Bereck, wearing the same clothes throughout, George and the other prisoners were taken by train in January 1944 to a large railway center near the Polish-Czechoslovakian border. There, they unloaded ammunition from German trains and transferred it onto trucks.<\/p>\n
According to George, they handled some highly explosive ammunition, casually tossing it to one another, assembly-line style. \u201cWhat I remember is that the guards became very nervous. But I was coming to this phase in my life where I don\u2019t care about life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In June 1944, George and the remaining prisoners were put on a train headed to a concentration camp. The train, however, stopped to change engines in Budapest, where American forces were dropping bombs.\u00a0 The Hungarian guards, fearing the train would be hit, suddenly disappeared. \u201cWe disappeared, too,\u201d George said.<\/p>\n
Through Catholic cousins living in Budapest, George tracked down his mother, who was living in a \u201cyellow star\u201d apartment. George moved in.<\/p>\n
Soon after, while looking for work, George was approached by a man who recognized his Viennese accent and led him to a hideout for the Hungarian underground. They produced false papers \u2014 such as birth certificates and employment papers \u2014 for Jews hidden throughout the city, and George was tasked with delivering these documents. \u201cIt was dangerous work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
During this time, Budapest\u2019s Jews were forced into a ghetto. With his Red Cross papers, George was able to enter the ghetto, find his mother and bring her to his apartment.<\/p>\n
Late in December 1944, with the Russian army surrounding Budapest, the Germans couldn\u2019t transport Jews to concentration camps. Instead, they marched them to the Danube River, lined them up on its shore, and machine-gunned them, letting the bodies fall into the water.<\/p>\n
In early January, fearing he and his mother would starve, George announced, \u201cWe are going to Szeged.\u201d They went to a station for Russian military trains, the only available means of transportation, and, George, wearing a Red Cross armband and carrying a doctor\u2019s bag, offered a soldier there two packages of sulfa drugs in exchange for a ride. Because gonorrhea was rife among the Russian military, his bribe was accepted.<\/p>\n
On the train, George told his mother he wanted to be a symphony conductor.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019ll be a doctor,\u201d his mother answered. And on Jan. 5, 1945, with the Russians controlling the city, George enrolled in the University of Szeged\u2019s medical school, changing his name to Berci to deflect anti-Semitism. To finance his education he cleaned instruments in the physiology department.<\/p>\n
In Szeged, George\u2019s mother met and married Frank Breszlauer.<\/p>\n
George graduated from medical school summa cum laude in 1950. He then worked as a resident at the University of Szeged\u2019s surgical clinic.<\/p>\n
In 1954, George became an assistant in surgery at Postgraduate School of Medicine in Budapest, where he was very interested in experimental surgery and instrumentation.<\/p>\n
Then, in October 1956, the Hungarian Revolution broke out. Two weeks later, a large Soviet force entered the city, opening fire on demonstrators in Parliament Square and severely injuring 250 of them. Casualties were taken to a hospital, where George and other surgeons operated day and night.<\/p>\n
After that, George decided to leave Hungary. On Nov. 26, 1956, George, his mother and stepfather boarded a train, disembarking one stop before the Austrian border. They came to a cornfield where, in a group of 30 people, they set out on a three-mile walk in rain and snow to the border, which was guarded by Russian soldiers.<\/p>\n
After they\u2019d walked for a mile, falling to the ground whenever searchlights scanned the area, George\u2019s mother gave up, insisting on returning to Budapest. But George dropped everything he had, including a small briefcase with some money, and, although he was barefoot because his shoes had become stuck in the mud, he carried her the rest of the way, an all-night journey.<\/p>\n
They made their way to Vienna. There, George was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship and promised a job in Boston. But, as he believed the United States and Russia were on a collision course, he opted to go \u201cas far away as possible from the next war\u201d and chose Australia.<\/p>\n
George settled in Melbourne, working as a technician and studying English, memorizing 100 words a day. Then, from 1957 to 1962, he joined the surgery department of two Melbourne hospitals, continuing his work in experimental surgery and optical technology.<\/p>\n
In 1968, George came to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center as a visiting professor and never left. Today he is recognized as the pioneer who developed the techniques that serve as the foundation of all endoscopic and laparoscopic surgeries.<\/p>\n
At 92, he is senior director of Minimally Invasive Endoscopic Research at Cedars-Sinai. In addition to teaching and researching, he enjoys classical music. He has been married to Barbara (Weiss) Berci since 1988 and is the father of three children from previous marriages \u2014 Kitty, born in 1950; Winton, 1955; and Nina, 1969. He has six grandchildren.<\/p>\n
George said he doesn\u2019t \u201cbeat his chest\u201d that he\u2019s a survivor. And he doesn\u2019t talk about the Holocaust much, except to his children and grandchildren. \u201cI\u2019m very keen that the next generation should know about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n