Protesting anti-vaxxers greet hundreds of guests at star-studded Jerusalem event; Bourla, son of Greek survivors, to give cash to planned Holocaust Museum in Thessaloniki
Albert Bourla, the CEO and chairman of Pfizer, accepted this year’s annual $1 million Genesis Prize in Jerusalem on Wednesday night, declaring that he would donate the funds towards a planned Holocaust Museum in Thessaloniki, Greece, where he was born reports the Times of Israel.
Bourla, the son of Holocaust survivors, led his company to develop the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19 in just nine months.
Nearly 20 million lives were estimated to be saved by COVID-19 vaccines during the first year they became available.
The annual yearly prize has been awarded since 2014, is given to “extraordinary individuals for their outstanding professional achievement, contribution to humanity, and commitment to Jewish values.”
At a glittering ceremony attended by around 900 guests, including President Isaac Herzog and his wife, Michal, Bourla recalled his parents, among just 2,000 survivors of the Holocaust among a prewar Jewish population in the city of 50,000.
