Susan E. Cernyak-Spatz (July 27, 1922 – November 17, 2019) was an Austrian-born professor of German language and literature at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

She finished undergraduate studies at Southwest Missouri State College in 1968, and earned her doctoral degree at the University of Kansas in 1972.

[3] In retirement, into her nineties, she continued giving interviews,[8] lectures to community groups, and talks to high schoolers, on her own experiences during the war.

[17] and co-edited Language and Culture: A Transcending Bond- Essays and Memoirs by American Germanists of Austro-Jewish Descent (1994, with Charles S.

[18] She translated several works from German into English, including Bernhard Frankfurter's The Meeting, based on a 1988 film in which a Holocaust survivor, Dagmar Ostermann, confronted a Nazi physician, Hans Wilhelm Münch.

[19] Susan Eckstein married Bernard M. Fishman, an American serviceman, in Brussels,[20] and moved to the United States with him in 1946.

"When she conveyed it to students, they could take her story and take it into their souls, and hear the lessons she had to teach, based on her experiences, and try to create a much better tomorrow.