Chana Kirszenberg Heitler

Esther Loeb and Regina Stern honor their mother Chana Kirszenberg Heitler, who was “the root that kept us together,” according to Loeb. Chana and her family suffered tremendously during the war; she lost her husband Josef to disease while imprisoned at a Siberian labor camp as well as her one-year-old baby to starvation while at the same camp. She survived the war, and met her second husband at a DP camp in Europe. They came to Nashville in 1949, where Chana lived until she died at age 94. For many years, she had enjoyed hosting friends and family at her house after services at the synagogue.

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