Saul Merin

Saul Merin was born in 1933 in Będzin

Saul Merin was born in 1933 in Będzin, Poland, to Yitzhak and Gitel. On August 3, 1943, as his family waited at the train station for deportation to Auschwitz, he and his younger sister Dina escaped. They hid with Aniela Zawadzka, the family's former housekeeper, until the Red Army arrived in January 1945.

He immigrated to Israel in 1949. He studied medicine at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem from 1953 to 1960. After army service from 1961 to 1963, he trained in ophthalmology at Hadassah, and later studied further in Toronto and Chicago.

From 1965 to 1967 he worked in Malawi. He became a full professor at the Hebrew University in 1979 and headed the eye unit at Hadassah Mount Scopus from 1979 to 1998. He chaired the Israel Ophthalmological Society from 1976 to 1982 and published works on inherited eye diseases.

Late in life he headed the retina unit at St John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem, working with Arab ophthalmologists. He died in 2012 and was buried at Kiryat Anavim. He was married to Rachel and had 3 children.