Susan Rubin Suleiman is a child survivor of the Holocaust, but even though she has published many books and articles devoted to World War II and the Holocaust, she never gave a survivor interview until 2024, when she also joined the survivor volunteer group at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. This year, she published her essay “How I Became a Survivor in My Eighties,” a frank exploration of the reasons for her reticence and of the ambivalence she feels about the terms “survivor” and “victim.” She will be in conversation with Maurice Samuels, the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French, chair of the Department of French, and director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism.
Suleiman is the C. Douglas Dillon Professor Emerita of the Civilization of France and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.
