Cernyak-Spatz, Susan E., 1922-

Wood, Catherine (Oral history interviewer)

Charlotte, North Carolina

J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections and University Archives, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

1974-03-28

1 audio file (0:34:09) : digital, MP3 + 1 transcript (17 pages : PDF)

Audio

spoken word

eng

Susan Cernyak was a 52-year-old woman at the time of interview, which took place in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was born in Vienna, Austria in 1922. She was educated at Southwest Missouri State College and the University of Kansas, and was employed as a professor of German language and literature at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Susan Cernyak, a UNC Charlotte professor and Holocaust survivor, recounts her experience during World War II. Born in Austria, Ms. Cernyak describes the treatment of Austrian Jews before and after Nazi Germany's annexation of the country. She explains how her family moved to Czechslokvia, her father's escape to Belgium, and how she and her mother were captured before they could join him there. Ms. Cernyak and her mother were sent to Auschwitz, and she talks about her mother’s death in the gas chamber and her life as a work prisoner in the concentration camp. She discusses reuniting with her father and her move to the United States following her marriage to an American G.I. Throughout the interview, Ms. Cernyak discusses the long history of European antisemitism, and she ends by saying that Americans must reject racial or ethnic polarization.

MP3 access copy created on ingest from WAV preservation master. Interview originally recorded on quarter inch open reel tape, duplicate compact cassette digitized using a Digidesign 003 rack.

Cernyak-Spatz, Susan E., 1922-

Auschwitz (Concentration camp)

World War (1939-1945)
Jewish Holocaust (1939-1945)

College teachers
Antisemitism
Concentration camps
Holocaust survivors
Jews

Austria--Vienna
Poland--Oświęcim

Interviews
Oral histories

1920-1980

Charlotte Regional Oral History

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audio/mpeg

Holocaust Commemoration Display Materials, MS0305, J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (https://findingaids.uncc.edu/repositories/4/resources/576)

OH-CE0030

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/uncc:3142