Then I noticed a stone peaking out of an overgrown section that I had taken to be an as yet unused portion of the cemetery grounds and a gate that once opened into this section. As I approached the stone, I made out Hebrew alphabetic characters. I could see more stones back in the undergrowth and started climbing through the thigh high weeds and 10 to 12 foot tall saplings that looked to be about 15 years old. I looked at each stone I came across, pushing aside the saplings and weeds, pulling off the vines to check the names. I was stunned by the condition in which I found this cemetery.

As a child, I went with my parents each Memorial Day to tend the graves of several generations of our family. What had seemed like a duty to me as a child became something different as I matured. I came to know that it had to do with family, with thinking about loved ones gone, about remembering and retelling old family stories passed down about this great grandmother or that great-great grandfather. There must be no one left in this village to tend the graves and tell the stories of those who had gone before.

With that thought, the enormity and almost completeness of the Nazis’ hideous crime came home to me emotionally in a way it had not before. I think prior to that moment, I had always been horrified intellectually by what I read in books and saw in movies, but it had never affected me so profoundly emotionally. I wept as I crawled from stone to stone in search of your family names.

Then, suddenly I was face to face with a tended grave - one with no saplings and weeds and a fresh batch of newly planted annuals covering it. It was someone who had died in the mid 1970s (it was now 1990.) I realized that this person must have tended the cemetery until they died and now someone in town was tending their grave, but none other. That is why the saplings were only about 15 or so years old.  

Right behind this stone, I found the first two stones bearing the name of Steiner - Josefine and Mathias. The names were easy to see because these stones benefited from the sapling removal and weed whacking that had been done for the stone behind them. Close by there was another Steiner stone and while the carving was somewhat worn there was a photograph behind glass on it. I hope this person is a relative.

Still no Seidemans, so I kept climbing and crawling through the weeds and saplings with about 30 minutes left until time to catch the train. Then I found a stone with the name Seideman - Albert and Ruzena. Someone had added, in memoriam, the name Rudolf (a grandson?) to the bottom of this stone - who did that? This is all I found in the time I had on this brief visit.

When I returned home I suggested that, since the American branch of the family might be all that was left, how about setting up a small fund that might allow this section of the cemetery to be cleaned up. At least the saplings should be cut so they don’t overturn the stones, the weeds regularly mowed. At the time, there was little interest, so that idea has lain fallow for 12 years.

Now you come with an interest in tracing your family tree. I encourage you to go to Caslav and search the cemetery for yourself. If you have other names of family that lived in Caslav, I am sure you will find them buried in this cemetery. The Caslav cemetery is hallowed ground; please walk it looking for traces of those who have gone before you. Perhaps you will meet the person or persons who tend that one lone grave. Perhaps they will know some stories passed on to them by the one whose grave they tend - stories about people that might be your people.

Best Wishes, Rita Reed

Editor’s Note:  Rita Reed is a professor of photojournalism at Missouri University. At the time she took this side trip, she was on assignment for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I am grateful for her permission to use these pictures and this story. She has given me the incentive to look beyond just my family, and to lead the effort to restore the Caslav Jewish cemetery, for the families of all the past Jewish residents of Caslav, including those who were not fortunate enough to be buried in this hallowed ground.

Al Stein