Zsuzsanna Ozsváth (2 July 1931 – 6 February 2026) was a Hungarian-American author and translator of Jewish descent. After moving to the United States, she documented her experience as a holocaust survivor and translated several works of poetry and literature, mainly those of Hungarian and German authors. In 2003 she was named the Leah and Paul Lewis Chair of Holocaust Studies at the University of Texas, Dallas.
Education A classical pianist, Ozsváth was awarded a concert diploma from the State Academy of Music at Hamburg in 1961. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in German Language and Literature from The University of Texas at Austin in 1968.
Career Ozsváth joined the University of Texas at Dallas as a lecturer in 1976, initially teaching 19th- and 20th-century literature and history classes. Shortly thereafter, she began teaching courses about the Holocaust.
She spearheaded the founding of the Holocaust Studies Program at the University of Texas at Dallas in 1986. In 2003, she was appointed to the Leah and Paul Lewis Chair of Holocaust Studies. Ozsváth retired in 2020.
Selected publications Foamy Sky: The Major Poems of Miklós Radnóti (1992) The Iron–Blue Vault: Attila József, Selected Poems (1999)Reviews of The Iron–Blue Vault In the Footsteps of Orpheus: The Life and Times of Miklós Radnóti (2000)Reviews of Footsteps of Orpheus When the Danube Ran Red (2010)Reviews of When the Danube Ran Red My Journey Home: Life After the Holocaust (2019) The Golden Goblet: Selected Poems of Goethe (2019) Faust, Part One (2021) Light within the Shade: Eight–Hundred–Years of Hungarian Poetry (2022)
Honors and award Ozsváth received a Fulbright Award (1990-1991). She was a co-recipient of the Milán Füst Prize for her translation of Miklós Radnóti's poems.
Personal life and death In 1950, she married Dr. Istvan “Pista” Ozsváth (1928-2013). In 1957 they immigrated to Hamburg, Germany and later in 1962 they moved to the United States, where he had been offered a position as a mathematics professor at The University of Texas in Austin.
Ozsváth died on 6 February 2026, at the age of 94.
References
External links Testimony at the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, July 1985