We are very sad to report that our dedicated board member Dr. Jana Prot-Wald died on May 16, 2011, in Seattle, Washington. She was 85.

Jana Prot was born in Krywałd, near Bytom, Poland, into an assimilated Polish-Jewish family. She spent some of the war years in Warsaw sheltered by the Kielan family, which in 1991 was awarded the title of "Righteous Among the Nations of the World” by Yad Vashem. After graduating from high school in 1943, she joined the Polish resistance and worked as a field medic during the 1944 Warsaw Rising.

Some of her wartime recollections are in the book The Last Eyewitnesses: Children of the Holocaust Speak, vol. 2 (Northwestern Univ. Press, 2005), „Fragments of Memory”, p. 209-15. Her memoir Nie ma powrotu [There Is No Way Back], completed in 2010, is being translated into English.

After the war, Jana finished her medical studies in Wroclaw, married Dr. Ignacy Wald, a psychoneurologist (1923-91), and began work in the Neurologic Clinic at the Warsaw Medical Academy. In 1971 she moved to the United States and settled in Lexington, Mass. She obtained board certification and entered private practice in Concord, Massachusetts, in neurology and internal medicine.

After retiring, she moved to Seattle to be near her daughter, Anna, and her family.

Jana is survived by her daughter Anna (Joel), son John (Storm), brother Tomasz (Eliza), niece Kasia (Michał), and grandchildren to whom she was very devoted: Ari, Eli, Mara, Scott, and Leila. She was preceded in death by her grandson, Joshua.

Jana was an active and valued board member of the AAPJS for many years. She was a connoisseur of Polish literature, loved Polish poetry, and was particularly helpful in carefully reviewing each issue of Gazeta to make comments and corrections. She will be greatly missed.

Donations in her memory may be made to Planned Parenthood or the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust.