Saul Merin, Friend to the Hospital Group, Passes Away in Jerusalem

It is with great heaviness of heart that the St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital Group must share the news of the death of our dear friend and colleague, Saul Merin, Professor of Ophthalmology at Israel's Hadassah Medical Center and part-time consultant at our East Jerusalem Hospital. 

Professor Merin joined the staff at SJEHG Jerusalem for two days each week in 2001.  The Peres Centre for Peace had just announced that it would fund the Joint Training Programme, permitting SJEHG Residents to receive training at the world renowned Hadassah Hospital, and Merin’s employers suggested it might be beneficial to have a representative from their own staff at SJEHG. 

Writing in Jerusalem Scene in 2007, Professor Merin said that never in all of the time that he had then spent at SJEHG had he regretted the move,

“I find the doctors, nurses and practitioners speak and think the same way I do…  I thoroughly enjoy meeting patients who come from remote places such as Nablus, Jenin or Gaza.”

Latterly, due to ill health, Professor Merin – whose contributions include his seminal textbook, Inherited Eye Diseases – had cut his working hours down to one day per week.

His wife and family held a private funeral on Wednesday 28 August after Professor Merin had passed away peacefully, without pain or discomfort.

As a child, Saul Merin escaped deportation by train to Auschwitz on August 3, 1943, and was hidden in Będzin in southwest Poland, until the arrival of the Soviet army in January 1945. He emigrated to Israel in 1949.

Professor Merin will be sadly missed.