Holocaust
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Earned Title: Author
by Joanie Schirm on January 12, 2015 PermalinkEarned Title: Author Seven years ago, January 11, 2008, I sold my Orlando engineering company. Having left behind the lofty title of President, I entered my next life chapter with a goal: Published Author. It was a position title I had to earn. Befuddled as to how to describe my new endeavor, my husband Roger
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Inspiration for my fateful journey
by Joanie Schirm on December 1, 2014 PermalinkInspiration for my fateful journey When you’re an author of nonfiction, reader feedback inspires when you learn you’ve touched a personal chord within someone’s life. Lately, a couple of heartwarming book reviews of Adventurers Against Their Will, remind me the day-in, day-out grueling research and study is well worth this fateful writing journey. From Judith
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“Man who nabbed most dangerous man in Europe dies” …
by Joanie Schirm on October 2, 2014 Permalinkhttp://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries/30222106-418/paul-kraus-wwii-gi-who-nabbed-most-dangerous-man-in-europe-dies-at-95.html Imagine meeting someone through their seventy year-old letters – not addressed to you but to your father- who by the time you read the letters had passed away. Through the letter writer’s own intimate 1940’s words, you meet this person as a young man; a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague in Shanghai, China.
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What’s up for your next path in life?
by Joanie Schirm on August 23, 2014 PermalinkWhat’s up for your next path in life? As an author who started to write books after six decades of ‘not’ writing books, I’m a good example to think about when you want to step off the sidewalk, turn a new corner, and follow your dreams. I’m proof that each day offers the opportunity to
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Remembrance + Hope – A Common Cause for Humanity
by Joanie Schirm on January 25, 2014 PermalinkRemembrance + Hope – A Common Cause for Humanity It would seem to most that the United Nations-sanctioned International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 and Chinese New Year this January 31st would have little to do with one another. And yet during my father’s life, and now in my own daily writing,
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Things that are tough are what you remember.
by Joanie Schirm on January 8, 2014 PermalinkThings that are tough are what you remember. I was brought up on the view that if you wait patiently until the end of the story, the good people will live happily ever after. As a 1960’s child, “Treat others with respect and make the world better wherever you go” paraphrases the example
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From the Floor of British Parliament, Echoes from the Past
by Joanie Schirm on August 31, 2013 PermalinkAs the crisis in Syria boils and the clear path is made to the Bashar al-Assad regime being responsible for chemical weapons dispensed on innocent citizens (including some 400 children) I think of days past and wonder what the lessons are we should have learned. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=217296289 How bad does something have to unfold for humanity
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Approaching this day in history: August 15, 1944: Allied armies invade Southern France
by Joanie Schirm on August 10, 2013 PermalinkFrom the historic Holzer World War II Letter Collection of 400 letters written to and from my dad by 78 Czech writers from 1939 – 1946: a letter from someone who found refuge in Southern France before war broke out. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005470 Letter from cousin Rudolf “Rudla” Fischer in 1939 after he, his wife Erna, and son