German literature expert Ernestine Schlant Bradley delivers Cornell Holocaust Lecture

MOUNT VERNON — Educator and author Ernestine Schlant Bradley, wife of former presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, will give the Annual Holocaust Lecture at Cornell College on Thursday, April 19, at 11 a.m. in King Chapel. Her speech takes the title of her 1999 book, “The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust.” Admission is free.

The Holocaust Days of Remembrance are April 15-22. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the genocide of European Jews.

Bradley is a professor of German and comparative literature at Montclair State University. “The Language of Silence” examines the work of post-war German authors as they reflect or fail to reflect on the genocide. Among her other writings, she co-edited with J. Thomas Rimer “Legacies and Ambiguities: Postwar Fiction and Culture in West Germany and Japan” (1991) and has authored “Die Philosophie Hermann Brochs” (1971) and “Hermann Broch” (1978), two books about the work of the Austrian novelist and philosopher. She also has written articles and organized academic conferences on 20th-century German and Austrian literature.

She was born in Passau, Germany, in 1935 and came to the United States in 1957, working as a stewardess for Pan Am. She became a U.S. citizen in 1963. She holds a bachelor’s degree in romance languages and master’s and doctorate degrees in comparative literature, all from Emory University.

She serves on a number of boards including the American Council on Germany, Youth for Understanding and the American Institute of Contemporary German Studies.

Her lecture is co-sponsored by Coe and Mount Mercy colleges, the Thaler Holocaust Memorial Fund and the Jewish-Christian Dialogue Group of Cedar Rapids.