A memorial service for Gustav Schonfeld, MD, the Samuel E. Schechter Professor and former head of the Department of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, will be held at 4:30 p.m. Sept. 23 in Moore Auditorium in the North Building.
Schonfeld, also the former physician-in-chief at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, died May 21, 2011, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. He was 77.
Internationally known for his research on heart disease prevention and cholesterol and for his expertise on lipid metabolism, he studied apolipoprotein B (apoB), the major protein of low-density lipoprotein, commonly known as “bad” cholesterol. Schonfeld led the Division of Atherosclerosis, Nutrition and Lipid Research at Washington University School of Medicine from 1972-2002.
Schonfeld spent more than a year of his childhood in Nazi concentration camps. After the war, Schonfeld and his father spent a year recovering in Czechoslovakia, while relatives in St. Louis acquired the necessary immigration documents to bring them to St. Louis. During this time, they were reunited with his mother, who had survived Auschwitz. The three Schonfelds moved to St. Louis a year after the liberation. In 2009, he published a memoir, Absence of Closure, that described his experiences in the concentration camps.
Please RSVP by Sept. 14 to specialprograms@wusm.wustl.edu or 286-0071.