Pulitzer-Nominated Author, Survivor Presents Holocaust Lecture

KEENE, N.H. 9/15/04 - Nechama Tec, two-time Pulitzer nominee and professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut at Stamford, will present the seventh annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 27, in the Mabel Brown Room of the Young Student Center at Keene State College. Her talk, “Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust,” is sponsored by Keene State’s Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies. It is free and open to the public.

Tec was born in Lublin, Poland, in 1931 and lived for three years during World War II under an assumed Christian identity. With the aid of Catholic Poles, Nechama - together with her sister and parents - survived the war by hiding in homes and evading Nazi detection.

After the Second World War, Tec married Leon Tec, a child psychiatrist, and then immigrated with her husband to the United States in 1952. Upon earning her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in sociology from Columbia University, she embarked on a career in academia.

Segal is the author of Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood, an autobiographical account that received the Merit of Distinction Award from the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland, In The Lion’s Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeise and Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust, in which she explores the role of gender, based on first-hand Holocaust survivor accounts.

For more information, contact Paul Vincent, director of the Cohen Center, at 603-358-2722.