A photography exhibition in honor of Holocaust survivor and UNC Charlotte professor emerita Susan Cernyak-Spatz opens with a community reception at 5 p.m., Sunday, April 27, in the College of Education, Room 402.
The exhibit “Susan Cernyak-Spatz: Auschwitz-Birkenau Survivor and the Lives She Touches” features photographs by Matthew Brien, a photographer and UNC Charlotte student. The images depict Cernyak-Spatz with students and alumni, and the event will feature music and reflections from people who are depicted with Cernyak-Spatz.
The College of Arts + Architecture and the Department of Languages and Culture Studies in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences are sponsoring the event, which also received support from the German program in the Department of Languages and Culture Studies.
Cernyak-Spatz was born in Vienna in 1922. She experienced the early Nazi oppression in Berlin; post- "Anschluss" Vienna; Nazi occupied Prague; and deportation to Theresienstadt in 1942. She was interned in Birkenau, the woman's camp in Auschwitz, followed by a "Death March" and incarceration in Ravensbrück from which she and a group of fellow inmates walked away to freedom.
She has written and lectured frequently to school, college and civic groups throughout the United States and Europe about the Holocaust and how to teach it. Her memoir of her experiences during the period is the book “Protective Custody Prisoner 34042.”
Photo by Matthew Brien