Susan Cernyak Sparrow

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Susan Cernyak-Spatz (née Eckstein , born July 27, 1922 in Vienna ; died November 17, 2019 in Charlotte , North Carolina ) was an American German scholar and historian of Austrian origin. From 1942 to 1945 she was deported to several concentration camps as a Jew . She was one of the Holocaust survivors who spoke out as eyewitnesses and contemporary witnesses.

Life

Eckstein moved with her family to Berlin in 1929 , where they attended elementary school and the Lyceum . In 1936, she and her parents, who owned a postcard publishing company, moved from Berlin back to Vienna. After the annexation of Austria in March 1938, she emigrated with her parents to Prague . After the annexation of the Czech Republic , the father first fled to Poland and from there to Brussels , but was unable to bring the family back due to the outbreak of the Second World War . In May 1942 she and her mother were sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto and from there in January 1943 deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . In the course of the evacuation of the prisoners from the Auschwitz concentration camp, she was taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp on a death march in January 1945 . There she experienced the liberation by the Red Army in the spring of 1945 . Afterwards she was housed in a DP camp and worked as an interpreter for the CIC and British military authorities.

In 1946 she emigrated to the USA and later studied German there . In 1973 she received her doctorate , after which she was Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, NC until her retirement in 1992. From 1993 she gave lectures on dealing with the Shoah by those affected and later born in Germany. One of her scientific priorities was the subject of Holocaust literature . She was a founding member of the North Carolina Holocaust Commission .

Cernyak-Spatz was married for the second time and had three children from his first marriage.

Honors

Works

  • German Holocaust Literature. 1985 (also Diss. Engl.)
  • "I wanted to live ..." Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ravensbrück. Three stations in my life . Edited by Hans H. Pöschko. Metropol Verlag , 2009 (2nd edition) 158 pp. ISBN 978-3-940938-18-3

literature

  • Hertha Hanus: Cernyak-Spatz, Susan E. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 109–112 ( online ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Jim Morrill: Cernyak-Spatz survived the Holocaust - and then made sure others couldn't forget. In: The Charlotte Observer. November 19, 2019, accessed November 20, 2019 .
  2. a b c Susan E. Cernyak-Sparrow . In: Brigitta Keintzel / Ilse Korotin (eds.), Scientists in and from Austria , Verlag Böhlau, Vienna (inter alia) 2002, pp. 109–112