A LETTERS FROM MY SISTER

A Memoir - A "Righteous Gentile"
The letter came after two months, as anticipated.  This time it said in effect:
"Mission Accomplished."

It happened over fifty years ago, in August, 1938. 1 was ten years old, and I
waved good-bye to my grandmother who was in an ambulance going to the hospital in
the big city, Ceske Budejovice or Budweis, in Southern Bohemia,, Czechoslovakia.
Our little village, Horni Dvorsiste or Oberhaid, was brewing with trouble, and in
September we were forced to flee to the interior of the country.  There we waited for
six months until our passage to America was assured, one day after Hitler marched
into Prague.
And what happened to my grandmother?  Did she die in the hospital?  Did she
survive only to go to the ovens?  Did she suffer?  These thoughts haunted me for many
years, but...
Two years ago, in September, 1995, my son and I travelled to that big city,
explored at the City Hall and found nothing.  Our next stop was the Jewish cemetery
which was locked.  Inquiry at the factory next door yielded a telephone call to the man
with the key.
He was tall, fiftyish, nice-looking, a veterinarian - and Gentile.  Over the years
he took it upon himself to clean, restore, work in this vandalized remnant of a
once-proud Jewish community.  He unlocked the gates of the cemetery, and row after
row we searched for some trace of my grandmother and found nothing.  He took my
address and promised to research and write to me, but I suspected that I would never
hear.
Wrong!  After a few months, a letter with a Czech stamp and the return address
of Dr. Jaroslav Sereda came, and then another and several more.  Step by step, this
 righteous Gentile, a man with a conscience, about a devastated people, wrote to me
about his progress.  He sent me a copy of the discovered hospital report that my
randmother had died there in December, 1938, and was indeed buried in this
cemetery.  At his own expense, he traveled, to Prague and found out the exact location
of the grave.  He could not look for it until the winter snows melted, and then he wrote
again to affirm the find.  As an additional favor, he agreed to arrange for a gravestone,
sent me an estimate with his own drawings of styles, and finally submitted my
wording, including appropriate Hebrew words, to the artisan.  We became friends over
 these months of mutual correspondence.
This most recent letter included several photographs of the finished
gravestone, with an explanation about the large stone placed at the base as a
memorial.  My friend had traveled to my village specifically to select a stone, so that
my grandmother would have a piece of home.
      This special person also gave me a special gift: peace of mind that my
grandmother did not have to suffer the worst of the Holocaust, and closure that 1, with
the help of this special friend, could do a final act of love for her.
Edith Holzbauer Kalech
September, 1997
Addendum: Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, sent Dr. Sereda a letter
 of acknowledgment in November, 1997.