Schwester M. Waltraud (Hedwig) Serf SSCJ

Hedwig Serf was born in Lebach, in the district of Saarlouis in the Rhineland in Germany, the daughter of a devout miner. There she attended elementary school and domestic school. At school, she met some sisters from the Congregation of the Servants of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) and decided to join the order herself. In March 1934, she joins the Congregation of the Servants of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) and is given the religious name M. Waltraud. In the same year, she is transferred to Vienna, completes a secondary school course and serves in the Rudolfstiftung hospital in Vienna's 3rd district. She is trained as a nurse. In 1937, she took her first vows.

Sr. M. Waltraud is reported by Karoline Hanek, dismissed from hospital service on July 19, 1939 and arrested one day later by "two gentlemen for interrogation" from the motherhouse. On December 2, 1939, she was sentenced by a special court to 8 months in prison for "insidious attacks on the state and party". She was released from prison on March 19, 1940, with her pre-trial detention credited.

Probably to protect the congregation, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart claimed to the Gestapo that Sister M. Waltraud had been expelled from the order. However, internal documents of the order prove that Sr. M. Waltraud was never expelled. After her imprisonment, she lived in the motherhouse until April 1941 and was then transferred to the branch of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Kühr in Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany until October 1946. There she experienced the liberation by the Western Allies.

On October 13, 1946, Sister M. Waltraud returned to the motherhouse of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Vienna and made her perpetual profession four days later. She then worked as a nurse in the General Hospital. In 1957, however, she also left the congregation, but remained in close contact with the order. She retired as a nurse in 1976. She died at the age of 88 in the motherhouse of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Vienna.