While living in a Jewish orphanage after World War II, Frances Cutler Hahn (right) holds a doll given to her by an aunt. At age 10, it was the first toy she could call her own.
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Frances Cutler Hahn was 4 years old the last time she saw her mother.
It was July 1942.
Within the month, Hahn’s mother Cyla Lindenberg, a Polish Jew living in Paris, France, was taken to the infamous concentration camp Auschwitz, never to be heard from again.
At the time, Hahn was living on a farm with a Christian family in the French countryside, hiding from the Nazis.
Her parents took her at the age of 3 to a Catholic children’s home in Paris to be hidden from the genocide. From there, Hahn moved to the farm and after World War II ended up moving from orphanage to orphanage.
“My childhood was chaotic and disconcerting,” Hahn wrote in “Children who Survived the Final Solution”. “I did not understand what was happening. Nothing made sense. Except my father, I don’t remember any adult taking time to explain to me what was going on and was ahead to happen, to allay my fears and confusion.”
Now a resident of Nashville, Hahn, 71, will discuss her experiences as a hidden child during the Holocaust at MTSU’s 9th biennial International MTSU Holocaust Studies Conference on Thursday, Oct. 22, through Saturday, Oct. 24.
She will be a panelist on the “Survivors and Liberators” panel joined by fellow Holocaust survivors Eric and Eva Rosenberg also from Nashville and Judy Cohen from Toronto, and liberators Jimmie Gentry from Franklin and James Dorris from Chattanooga.
The free and open panel will take place at 10:20 a.m. Friday, Oct. 23 in MTSU’s James Union Building.
Following the panel discussion, there will be a memorial tribute at 1:15 p.m. to three people who were involved in the event, one of whom is the late Lon Nuell, former Murfreesboro City Board of Education member and MTSU professor.
Throughout the weekend-long event, the conference will feature back-to-back presentations commemorating the Holocaust experience from cultural, educational and historical perspectives.
Guest speakers will include the Survivors and Liberators panel, which provides the public with an opportunity for to meet those who experienced the reality of the brutality of German Nazi policies.
German policies and actions resulted in the death of more than 6 million European Jews, as well as millions more Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals, the handicapped and other “undesirables,” 1.5 million of which were children.
Through her parents’ sacrifice, Hahn was spared most of the brutality of Nazi policies.
“I would not have survived if they hadn’t done this,” she said about being placed in an orphanage.
Hahn said every survivor, especially the children, survived because of the kindness of others.
She survived because of the kindness of a Catholic family, whose name she doesn’t remember.
But she does remember being hidden in plain sight, explaining her experience differs from most hidden children because she didn’t hide in any secret closets or an attic like Anne Frank.
She was out in the open French countryside mostly, but her identity as a Jewish child was hidden and she was taught Catholic rituals and prayers.
Hahn credits the bravery of the Catholic family, who took in herself and about 10 other Jew children, for surviving the war.
But all the generations of her family weren’t so lucky.
Her father Sholomo Zalman Kahane died after fighting with the French Resistance against the Nazi presence in France.
Hahn saw him twice in the hospital after the war ended and he explained to the 10-year-old girl what would become of himself and her.
“He said his end would bring me to the U.S.,” she said, adding his aunt and uncle, Rose and Jacob Schlessinger, brought her to Philadelphia in 1948 and later adopted her.
On her father’s side, only two of his sisters survived the war.
On her mother’s side, only two of the 12 siblings and one cousin survived.
“Unfortunately, more people didn’t help. More could have survived,” she said. “It’s easy for people to think whatever they do does not make a difference, but it did in terms for me and the next generation.”
Michelle Willard can be contacted at 615-869-0816 or mwillard@murfreesboropost.com.
More info …
Visit www.mtsu.edu/~holoed
Contact Dr. History professor Nancy Rupprecht at 615-898 2645 |
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