Adelson joins council on Holocaust

Tuesday, May 14, 2002 | 8:34 a.m.

Venetian owner Sheldon Adelson is one of 11 new presidential appointees to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said Monday.

Adelson, chairman of The Venetian's parent company, Las Vegas Sands Inc., was selected by President Bush because he "provides high venture capital to select high-technology companies in Israel and, with his wife, has established drug abuse treatment and clinics in Israel and Las Vegas," the organization said.

"I am delighted with the caliber of these appointments," Holocaust Memorial Council Chairman Fred Zeidman said in a news release.

"(They) include survivors of the Holocaust, scholars, philanthropists and business leaders. They will be invaluable assets as we begin our second decade of Holocaust education."

Other appointees include Nechama Tec, a Holocaust survivor, sociology professor at the University of Connecticut at Stamford and author of five books on the Holocaust; Mickey Shapiro, the son of Holocaust survivors, a real estate developer and former head of the Michigan Holocaust Memorial Center; and Dr. Joel Geiderman, the son of a Holocaust survivor and chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

The new appointees join 44 other presidential appointees to the council, which also features 10 congressional representatives and three members of the federal departments of education, interior and state.

The Washington, D.C.-based museum serves as the nation's institution for the documentation, study and interpretation of Holocaust history.