Rate My Professor Zsuzsanna Ozsváth

Zsuzsanna Ozsváth served as Emeritus Professor of Literature and History and held the Leah and Paul Lewis Chair in Holocaust Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas. Born on July 2, 1931, in Hungary, she survived the Holocaust as a child and immigrated to the United States, earning a Ph.D. in German Language and Literature from the University of Texas at Austin in 1968, a Concert Diploma in Piano from the State Academy of Music in Hamburg in 1961, and a Final Diploma in Piano from the Bartók Béla School of Musical Arts in 1955. She joined UT Dallas in 1976 as a lecturer, initially teaching 19th- and 20th-century literature, and progressed to assistant professor in 1983, associate professor in 1988, and full professor in 1998. Ozsváth founded the Holocaust Studies Program in 1986, directing it until her retirement in 2020, which later became the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies. She also served as Master of the School of Arts and Humanities from 1985 to 1988 and Acting Associate Dean in 1990.

Her academic interests encompassed Holocaust studies, Holocaust literature, Hungarian poetry including works by Miklós Radnóti and Attila József, and the interplay between aesthetics, ethics, and totalitarianism in French, German, and Hungarian literature. Notable publications include her memoirs When the Danube Ran Red (2010) and My Journey Home: Life after the Holocaust (2019); the biography In the Footsteps of Orpheus: The Life and Times of Miklós Radnóti (2000); and translations co-authored with Frederick Turner, such as Foamy Sky: The Major Poems of Miklós Radnóti (1992), The Iron-Blue Vault: Selected Poems of Attila József (1999), Light within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry (2014), and The Golden Goblet: Selected Poems of Goethe (2019). Ozsváth received the Milán Füst Prize from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1995 and was appointed to the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission in 2010. Through her teaching, scholarship, and mentorship, she profoundly shaped Holocaust education at UT Dallas and beyond, influencing generations of students and establishing the university as a key center for Holocaust studies.