M E D I A R e l e as e                                                        Contact: Prof. Dawn Saliba
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                         Phone: 631-656-2108
                                                                                             Email: dawn.saliba@ftc.edu

Five Towns College Presents Lecture and Discussion about the Holocaust with Survivor and Author Bernard Otterman

Author and Holocaust survivor, Bernard Otterman, will discuss Black Grass, his collection of short stories regarding the Shoah. A book signing and audience question and answer session will take place after the interview.

Dix Hills, NY: Five Towns College's Dix Hills Performing Arts Center is presenting a Holocaust memorial event.  Dr. Bernard Otterman, author of Black Grass, will speak about his fiction and sign books. Prof. Dawn Saliba will host the event, conduct
the interview with Mr. Otterman and moderate a Q & A session with the audience.

Author’s Bio:  Dr. Otterman is a child-survivor of the Shoah.  Born in Poland in 1937, the author was only two years old when World War II broke out. His Jewish family was targeted and, as he explains, it was only through the perseverance of his parents that they survived. “There are two reasons I’m alive—the courage of my mother and father,” he has said, “it is just a miracle. There is no other way of explaining it.”

Dr. Otterman went on to earn a Ph.D. from SUNY Stony Brook in 1968 before becoming chairman of the Engineering and Computer Sciences Department of Hofstra University in 1974. However, he has never been able to ignore his haunting memories and in 1993 began to use and transform his experiences into a series of fictional stories and poems.

Black Grass: The author’s stories are set in the ghettos and camps during and after the war against the Jews.  Dr. Otterman explains, "As a child survivor, the Holocaust forced itself in the manner of an unwelcome relative into my writing.” His stories reflect a duality between memory and fantasy and, in the author’s own words, "the ever-present past."

The Dix Hills Performing Arts Center:

This event is free and will take place on Monday, March 15th, 2010 from 3:00-5:00pm.

The Dix Hills Performing Arts Center is located at:

Five Towns College
305 North Service Road
Dix Hills, New York, 11746-5857.