In life we encounter many stories. Some are comic, some are tragic. Some stories are like our own in many ways. Others are similar, yet different from our own in ways that intrigue.
Then there are the stories that are so unique that they hold us spellbound.
Encountering stories like this can actually change us in ways that shape the rest of our personal narrative. Such is the story of Dr. Susan Cernyak-Spatz.
Susan is a Holocaust survivor. She lived through the horrors of Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Ravensbrück. After Liberation, Dr. Spatz could have spent the next few years quietly recovering from her trauma. Instead, she worked for the American Counter Intelligence Corps and the British Military Government as an interpreter. She married an American GI and moved to the U.S. on July 4, 1946. In 2005, Dr. Spatz wrote all the details of her story in her autobiography: Protective Custody: Prisoner 34042.
Charles LaBorde encountered this story and was moved to write an original play. You are invited to come and listen to a dramatic reading of this play at the Second Anniversary celebration of the Stan Greenspon Center for Peace and Social Justice on December 13, 2018 beginning at 7:00 pm in the Belk Chapel at Queens University. This will be an evening to hear an incredible story, to recognize the importance of and honor the more than three dozen Charlotte area Holocaust survivors, and to celebrate the success of the Greenspon Center’s first two years.
Click here to register: