Please join us for this year's Yom Hashoah commemoration with guest speaker, Frank Shatz.
This program will include the presentation of the 25th annual Holocaust Writing and Visual Arts competition awards.
Questions? Email Jessi Malkin
Frank Shatz was born in Czechoslovakia and educated in Budapest, Hungary, and at Charles University in Prague. His life would soon be forever changed by the upheaval of World War II.
During the Second World War, Shatz was forced into a Nazi slave labor camp. After managing to escape, he courageously joined the anti-Nazi underground movement in Hungary, risking his life to help others. When his homeland of Czechoslovakia was finally liberated, he returned to his hometown of Parkan and worked as a foreign correspondent based in Prague. However, Communist oppression soon made life untenable, forcing him to flee once again.
Accompanied by his wife Jaroslava, Shatz sought refuge in the United States, where he initially served as foreign news editor for the Hungarian Daily in Cleveland, Ohio. The couple later moved to Lake Placid, New York, where they established a retail business while Shatz continued his passion for writing about international affairs.
In Lake Placid, Shatz became deeply involved in fostering international understanding. He founded and served as executive director of the Lake Placid Council on Foreign Policy and, in 1980, created the Olympic People-for-People Program. His commitment to international education led him to play an instrumental role in establishing the Reves Center for International Studies at the College of William and Mary, working closely with the widow of his late friend Emery Reves to secure the center's endowment.
After retiring from business, Shatz embarked on a distinguished journalism career, becoming a columnist for the Virginia Gazette—established in 1736 and one of America's oldest newspapers. For over four decades, he has written a weekly column on international affairs, sharing his unique perspective shaped by personal experience with both tyranny and freedom.
Shatz's contributions have earned him numerous honors, including the Prentis Award for his service to William & Mary and the community. In 2001, the Virginia General Assembly passed a resolution commending him for "his heroic actions during World War II and his contribution to the Reves Center for International Studies." Two years later, he received the Americanism Medal—the highest honor given by the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution to a naturalized citizen—recognizing his "extraordinary qualities of leadership, trustworthiness, service and patriotism."
His wartime experiences are chronicled in Allan Zullo's book "Heroes of the Holocaust," while his own selected columns were compiled in "Reports from a Distant Place," published in 2012. In 2015, the College of William & Mary honored Shatz by naming him an honorary alumnus during commencement ceremonies, recognizing a lifetime dedicated to international understanding and service.