Nashville Holocaust survivor finally forgives her mom for doing the right thing. Never again!

"She was only five years old when the Nazis killed her mother in the Auschwitz concentration camp.



Frances Cutler Hahn remembers feeling really, really angry – at her mother.



The way she saw it then, her mom dumped her in a children’s home in Paris, abandoned her, left her sitting on a cold floor, confused, alone and scared.



The painfully shy little Jewish kid was surrounded by a bunch of children who crossed themselves during prayers each night in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary, stealing glances at the new girl and wondering why she wasn’t doing the same.



The girl cried often. Her mother – in the months before the Nazis shipped her to Germany – would visit her baby at the children’s home, visits that became harder and harder.



The sobbing girl would latch on to her mom and beg her to take her back. The girl became so hysterical that the home’s leaders limited the visits to once a week.

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“One of the things I had to deal with as an adult, I understand what my parents did was for my benefit,” said Hahn, 79, one of only a handful of Holocaust survivors living in Middle Tennessee.



“But the feelings I had as a three-year-old and four-year-old was anger. And it took me a long time to let go of that.”



Hahn – set to speak Sunday, Oct. 8 at the 10th anniversary ceremony for the Nashville Holocaust Memorial – has come to realize child survivors of the Holocaust also suffered real trauma.



Many avoided concentration camps or torture, but those children, too, carry deep scars from World War II..."



Nashville Holocaust survivor finally forgives her mom for doing the right thing