September 19, 2011

Contact:   Bill Giduz

Davidson College invites the public on Monday, September 19, to hear a talk by Holocaust survivor Susan Cernyak-Spatz of Charlotte.

Cernyak-Spatz, a Professor Emerita of German literature at UNC Charlotte, will speak about her suffering at the hands of the Nazi regime in a talk titled, "The Perpetrators of the Holocaust Through the Eyes of the Victims." It will begin at 4:30 p.m. in Hance Auditorium of Chambers Building, and there is no charge to attend. For more information, call 704-894-2284.

Cernyak-Spatz was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Vienna during the interwar period. In 1929, the family moved to Berlin, where they witnessed the Hitler movement's rise to power. Along with her parents, Cernyak-Spatz fled to Prague in March 1938. While her father managed to escape to Belgium shortly before the German invasion of Poland, the Nazis arrested and eventually deported Cernyak-Spatz and her mother.

Cernyak-Spatz survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, the women's concentration camp of Ravensbrück, and a death march during the waning weeks of the war. Her mother died in Theresienstadt.

In July 1946, Cernyak-Spatz managed to leave Europe for the U.S. She completed a dissertation on German Holocaust literature in 1971, working under the direction of Ruth Klüger, another survivor. She has published work on various aspects of the Holocaust, and her memoirs appeared in 2005. 

Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,900 students located 20 minutes north of Charlotte in Davidson, N.C. Since its establishment in 1837 by Presbyterians, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently regarded as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. Through The Davidson Trust, the college became the first liberal arts institution in the nation to replace loans with grants in all financial aid packages, giving all students the opportunity to graduate debt-free. Davidson competes in NCAA athletics at the Division I level, and a longstanding Honor Code is central to student life at the college.
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