329 HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR, FORENSICS SCHOLAR TO SPEAK AT MTSU APRIL 12

He avoided Hitler only to confront Jack Ruby, Ted Bundy and other murderers years later

March 28, 2007
CONTACT: Tom Tozer, 615-898-2919
Dr. Nancy Rupprecht, 615-898-2645

MURFREESBORO—As a young boy of 14 in occupied Poland, he, his mother and his sister hid their Jewish identity and walked among the Nazi invaders. In 1943, they escaped from Poland to Slovakia and from there to Hungary—and were liberated in January 1945. In the years that followed, he became a post-war German government expert on Holocaust survivor syndrome. He survived a horrifying childhood only to study the behavior of those who dispense horror.
Emanuel Tanay, M.D., highly esteemed and internationally known forensic psychiatrist and homicide expert, will speak at Middle Tennessee State University at 7 p.m., Thursday, April 12, on “The Psychology of Genocide.” His lecture will take place in the State Farm Lecture Hall in the Business and Aerospace Building and will be free and open to the public. His visit is being sponsored by The MTSU Holocaust Studies Committee.
“We wanted Dr. Tanay's presentation to be free and open to the general public so that as many middle Tennesseans as possible can take advantage of the opportunity to see him,”
Dr. Nancy Rupprecht, professor of history, commented. “How often do you get an opportunity to listen to an internationally respected forensic psychiatrist and also a Holocaust survivor, speak on the psychology of genocide, a topic about which he is uniquely qualified on both a professional and a personal level?”
A clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical School of Wayne State University in Detroit, Tanay has served as an expert witness in cases involving Jack Ruby, Ted Bundy, Sam Sheppard and Robert Garwood.
While sitting in a jail cell with Jack Ruby in 1964, Ruby once told Tanay that he was “crazier than I am,” because the latter never once thought of committing suicide during those years in Poland when he and his family pretended they were Christians.
“Suicide is surrender,” Tanay told Ruby. Tanay added that he wanted to survive.
A few years later, the U.S. Government sent Tanay to Vietnam during the war there to participate in a court martial and to evaluate marines at Danang Marine Corps Base who were accused of atrocities. In addition, and according to his biographical profile, Tanay has “come to a deep and unique understanding of the belief system behind 9/11.”
Tanay graduated from the University of Munich (Germany) Medical School, completed his internship and residency in Illinois and did post-graduate work at the University of Michigan.
The author of “Passport to Life: Autobiographical Reflections on the Holocaust,” Tanay is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, that body’s highest honor, and he also has received the highest award granted by the American Academy for Psychiatry and the Law. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and past president of the Michigan Psychiatric Society. Also, he was Resident Scholar at the Department of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton College of New Jersey.
Now retired from private practice, Tanay continues to write and lecture throughout the United States.
“Fifteen years ago almost no one knew what function a forensic psychiatrist filled in our justice system,” said Rupprecht. “However, since the “Law and Order” and “CSI” programs began to appear on televisions all over this country, we all have an inkling of how important and vital a role psychiatrists such as Dr. Tanay play in it.”
Dr. Tanay's visit is being co-sponsored by the MTSU departments of history, political science, English, sociology & anthropology, art, philosophy, psychology, Women’s Studies and the Global Studies Program.

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NOTE: Media welcomed. There is a black and white photo of Tanay on his Web site at http://www.drtanay.com.