Oswald “Valdik” Holzer arrives in Shanghai, China, July 5, 1939

RARE EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT  IN OLD LETTER DETAILS

MY FATHER’S ARRIVAL IN SHANGHAI, CHINA 80 YEARS AGO – JULY 5, 1939 

After escaping Hitler’s growing threat in his occupied Czech homeland, and traveling nearly 10,000 nautical miles from Marseille, France, Oswald “Valdik” Holzer, on July 5, 1939, reached Shanghai.  My father was a 28-year-old physician in a very foreign land.

(Watch award-winning MY DEAR BOY book trailer here.)

During 1937-1941, some twenty thousand desperate European Jewish refugees arrived in Shanghai.  While traveling the globe as an author for research and speaking engagements, I’ve learned this illustrious Shanghai history is well known among Holocaust scholars but little known to others.

Echoing the immigration turmoil of today’s world, during the late 1920s and 1930s, in the shadow of a global economic depression and the threat of war, many countries, including the United States of America, refused to increase their visa quota numbers. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center on Holocaust Studies, Shanghai took in more Jewish refugees than Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and South Africa combined. This little known truth makes “Shanghai” synonymous with “haven” and “rescue” in the narrative of the Holocaust era.

On this 80th anniversary of my father’s arrival in Shanghai as a Czech Jewish refugee, I share my dad’s eyewitness account via a letter he wrote (preserved with a carbon copy), to a close friend, Frantisek Schoenbaum, trapped with his wife Andula and young son Honza (John), in Prague under Nazi-control. The letter from the Holzer Collection was translated in 2008.

Shanghai, 7-20-1939

Franta, don’t be angry with me that I am bothering you, I have had no news from home for a month already. Please call my family and tell them to write to me airmail at Hong Kong POB 370 c/o Leo Lilling as that is my address. If something would happen, God forbid, with the family, write it to me, please, so that I can possibly help them somehow if it would be possible.

I am also including a letter for {Pavel} Koerper. He wants to come here, so I must work him up a little so that he would not be surprised. If some of you are in a lousy way perhaps, come here, it is better here, despite all that misery, than in Prague or in Europe in general. Notably, one can work here, and I will be already sitting {meaning probably in a place with medical practice} by that time so I could help you. Eventually, one would not stay here forever, and a man can get to some other place somewhat easier from here.

Thank you for your lovely letter.   In the meantime, you received undoubtedly my chattering from the ship.   We must stay in writing contact all the time.   You have no idea how happy you made me with that letter of yours.  You know, when a man does not hear that dialect of ours anymore, at least one can have something for enjoyable reading again.   To tell you the truth: that distance is not so big, and it does not seem so huge, but I am damnably homesick for all and for everything, mainly when a man is almost entirely without news and when he does not know when, and if at all, he will return. Such thoughts would develop in your head only after some time.   Do not be angry that I am responding to your cheerful letter with such sentimental jabbering, but it is called here “S’ai depression,” and supposedly everybody is going through that during their first time.  After all, you know that is not my nature.

I hope that in your literary ass {meaning: forgotten area, away from the center of action}, you will also mention the good physician Osvald who left his mother country to treat poor little Chinese.  In order for you to elaborate on this topic better, I am sending you the following contribution:

So already for three days, I have been partially pummeled with malaria. I caught it someplace in Saigon, such an idiotic French Indochina, but it is better than tuberculosis.   Hey, one must always be content.   I am curing it by myself, chiefly with whiskey, which is dreadfully cheap here (1 liter 7.-Kc [crowns]).   Otherwise, it is possible to catch in this beautiful but strange country everything from measles to leprosy.   Hey, so that I won’t forget, if you happen by any chance to talk with my family, do not tell them anything about these lovely things, they would be unnecessarily afraid.  It is not so bad.

As you had read “Chuan in China,” approximately 20% of it describes things well; otherwise, everything is yet crazier by far.   In a week here, you set aside all European social prejudices, you let yourself ride in a rickshaw, you are cursing Chinese, in Czech of course, you start to booze.   In short, you become a white shadow; it is somehow a matter-of-course situation.

Franta, there are 20,000 emigrants here, 98 % of them without money, so the society gave them housing in a quarter almost entirely destroyed by Japanese shooting, from where the Chinese fled.   And those Jews, Israelis, etc., built from those ruins their houses, opened businesses, coffee houses, even Jewish prostitutes are there.   But of course, who will guarantee them that the bombing of the area would not start tomorrow again?    Those who do not believe in that place and have a little money, live in the French Concession, it is first of all safe.   Like in a circus created for adventurers, you can make so much money here in a day that you don’t need to do anything else in life ever, and in an hour, you can have all of that go into a toilet.   The dollar dropped yesterday, and today by 30 %, that has been talked about here for a week already, so some people became wealthy, and others lost their shirts in the process.   Even the weather is so crazy:  I get out nicely in the morning in a white suit, with a towel around my neck as is a fashion here to have something for wiping when one is sweating like a pig, I sat on a bus and started moving.

However, a typhoon came in the meantime, and I had to get off the bus only with extreme difficulty, then I was running down the street until I exquisitely fell.   For a while, I was rolling in mud, and when I looked around then, I found out that numerous gentlemen are lying there in the same manner and that they have a good time looking at the mess.   So I had a good time, too.   Once in a while, some gentleman crawled over me with the necessary…” sorry.”  Oh, but all of a sudden, there was a loud sound beside me, a roof fell there.  I don’t know where because surrounding houses had none already anyway.   Under the roof, there were lying some rickshaws and an overturned car.    Therefore, I told myself again: safety first, and I slithered with the crowd into a nearest passage-way, where I waited for six hours till it was over.   One cannot distinguish now what was destroyed by Japanese and what by the typhoon.

For me, as a physician, there are some possibilities here.   I have some acquaintances here, and I feel that I would not get lost here.   However, I would not like to stay here as I lack some such feeling of home.  When I make some money here, I will rush farther inland immediately.   Otherwise, one can manage to live beautifully here, for 77 pounds a week, you are a big gentleman.  You can furnish a luxurious apartment for 5 pounds, and for 1 shai. Dollar, you can have a beautiful Miss for a week with everything.  And yet, I envy you those strolls along the river Luznice when there is a sweet fragrance of hay near us…

P.S. Write on airmail paper, you naive man, who are you paying the postage?

Valdik    {Oswald “Valdik” Holzer}

©2008 From the collection of Joanie Holzer Schirm.  Reproduction only with permission from Joanie Schirm: joanie@joanieschirm.com

www.joanieschirm.com

Dad’s story in MY DEAR BOY came to life via revelations from a treasure trove of four hundred letters he preserved after the war. Seventy-eight friends and relatives, along with Dad’s own seventy carbon-copied letters and journals written during his 19 months in China, detail the emotions, circumstances, and revelations encountered by displaced persons along with those trapped behind under Nazi-occupation. Former USHMM archives director, Henry Mayer, called the Holzer Collection “one of the most complete personal collections of WWII correspondence seen in years.”

The timeless letters remind what it’s like to be forced penniless from home, losing native land, family, friends, possessions, livelihood, and identity.  I exist because my father made it to China. My paternal grandparents, Arnost and Olga, and forty-two other relatives were not so fortunate. All hope-filled futures were lost as they perished in the Holocaust. Dad’s only tangible connection to his lost world were these old letters.  He hid them away in old Chinese boxes, moved to America and served as a family physician in Melbourne, Florida. The letters were discovered after his death and in 2008. Upon translation, they revealed a universal, timeless story relevant to today’s world.

MY DEAR BOY: A World War Story of Escape, Exile, and Revelation                        by Joanie Holzer Schirm

Book trailer

Available anywhere books are sold. In all formats: Hardcover, eBook, Audiobook

Through my publisher, Potomac Books, use a discount code 6AS19  https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/potomac-books/9781640120723/

MY DEAR BOY: Lesson Plans soon available at www.joanieschirm.com/teachers

Photos from the Holzer Collection. (Photo reproduction restricted without permission from author Joanie Holzer Schirm joanies@joanieschirm.com )

Now showing at the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education  Center of Florida:
DISPLACED PERSON: Oswald Valdik Holzer’s story with audio, featuring WWII letters, documents, photographs, vintage film, and clothing currently on exhibit. Upon the 2023 opening of Orlando’s new museum —Holocaust Museum for Hope & Humanity—the DISPLACED PERSON exhibit will become a permanent reminder of the ongoing struggles of displaced humanity throughout our world and what together we can do to diminish this plight.

Joanie Holzer Schirm    joanie@joanieschirm.com   

www.joanieschirm.com     For speaking engagements: joanie@joanieschirm.com

Dear Ms. Schirm,

I believe we may have met years ago. Your mother and father delivered the inaugural lecture in 1985 in the university’s humanities lecture series which I directed for twenty-five years. It was a lovely Thursday evening. They spoke about their return to China and sailing on the Yangtze. Jerry and Natalie Keuper, Jim Stoms, John and Patricia Miller were on the front row. I wrote my dissertation in Vienna and had a number of delightful conversations with your father about the Habsburgs.

I have taught at Florida Tech for nearly 40 years and knew your father well. Your parents were remarkable people. I look forward to reading your book when it is published. At this moment, my discretionary time is limited with finals, a Ph.D. defense, papers, etc. on the horizon. I can only promise a few minutes to review a pre-publication manuscript and would not be able to write any comments.

Many thanks for contacting me. Wishing you the success you deserve, I remain,

Respectfully, Gordon Patterson

In August 1940, an aunt who’d also managed to escape wrote from Camden, Maine to my refugee father living in the war-torn interior of China, about what she was facing:

“I can easily imagine how you feel and I would be really happy if you could get here as soon as possible. Not that the conditions here are much better. There are huge unemployment problems and strong anti-Semitic feelings. In the newspapers, you can read daily ads as: “Will only hire Aryan” etc., signs on some houses read: “Will rent a flat, to Aryans only.”   I am not afraid of anything, and curiously waiting how it all ends.  I don’t see a very bright future, though…”

In 2018, we see people exploiting the fear of ‘the other’ by spreading rumors and misinformation about the actual facts related to immigrants coming to America, legally or illegally.

The good news, if one cares to look for it, is truth now comes from the touch of a finger on a search engine. When you carefully seek reputable sources, often the best are from credible US government reports detailing many years of facts. This report from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) issued February 8, 2018, is very helpful for understanding statistics on immigrants and immigration to the USA.  https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states#Numbers

As widely stated, we all have a family migration story. Even ‘native’ American Indians arrived here from somewhere beyond the lands of what is now America. Thus, we are all immigrants and therefore ‘the other.’ Even before there was the United States, my mother’s lineage on her paternal side arrived in New Amsterdam (now New York City) in 1658 on the ship de Bruynvis (Brownfish). A later direct descendent during the Revolutionary war was the brave patriot Captain Daniel Bray. Bray was assigned the task of gathering the boats for the difficult task of General George Washington’s famous Delaware River crossing on Christmas night, 1776.  Since then, we’ve had a family tradition of saving the nation.

On my dad’s side, I’m the first generation. A distinction I have solely because my dad managed to escape the deadly wrath of the Nazis. Eventually, Dad settled in the United States of America in sunny Florida, his pride in becoming a naturalized citizen always recalled with high emotion and appreciation.

Today’s unwarranted fear mongering about migrants undermines our nation’s solidarity from within and attacks the entire fabric which has made our country the envy of the world, until maybe now. The constant attacks serve no purpose but to erode our promise for future generations.

So this brings me back to our family tradition of saving the nation.  Join me. Speak up for the value of immigrants in American life. Sure our country should always strive to make our modern immigration system work more efficiently as we strive to be a compassionate and just country of opportunity for those lucky enough to call it home.

Sign up for news alerts on www.joanieschirm.com about my forthcoming book:

Revolutionary war patriot who gathered the boats for General George Washington to cross the Delaware, Dec. 1776

MY DEAR BOY: A World War II Story of Escape, Exile, and Revelation

March, 2019 publication by Potomac Books

SS Chenonceaux – Valdik Holzer escape ship May 22, 1939

As a storyteller, I know we never are the sole author of anything that happens to us. During my nearly decade old writing journey, I’ve experienced many moments that appear to spring unexpectedly from the universe.  Recently, one such jolt arrived at my home via U.S. mail. Stamped “La Poste” on a white envelope with unrecognizable handwriting, the dispatch carried French postage stamps featuring two exotic landscape scenes—one from Egypt’s Siwa Oasis; the other a winter snowcap from Japan’s Mount Fuji.

As I carefully peeled the mysterious envelope open from one side, a vintage postcard revealed itself with a sepia-toned image of the S.S. Chenonceaux. My heart raced as I was on familiar terms with this steamship. From childhood stories, I’d learned on May 22, 1939, my Czech father had traveled on this ship as he sought refuge in Shanghai, China.

From 1938-41, nearly 20,000 European Jews fled to Shanghai, China,  more than in any other city in the world. For most of these refugees, because no visas were required, Shanghai provided a safe haven at a time when borders around the world were closed to the desperate Jews of Europe. After the Nazis had occupied the Czech lands, Dad departed from Marseilles, France when he fled Europe.

Through previous computer searches to learn about the ship’s history, I’d seen the boat’s image but never before in the form of an original postcard carrying a stranger’s indiscernible French handwriting from long ago. As I held the card in 2017, some seventy-eight years after Dad boarded the ship, there was no accompanying information as to whom mailed me the card.

As I admired the ship’s image for its significance in my life, I wondered how this postcard came to me.  I exist because my Jewish father was able to escape the Nazis and a fate that surely would have included death in the Holocaust. Perhaps it was sent from a French reader who’d uncovered my address after reading my debut book, Adventurers Against Their Will, which mentions the Chenonceaux.  Or was the mailing of this old card the reaction as a kind response to various social media posts through my blog, Twitter, or Facebook pages about my father and his friend’s refugee stories, a timely reminder of today’s migrant crisis?

I’ll likely never find the answer.  I only know I feel profound gratitude for one kind soul who decided to share a piece of significant family history when my Dad chose to seize a chance for life by taking the S.S. Chenonceaux to survival.

Along my now nine-year writing journey, I’ve encountered many incidents that I believe entail a wink from the cosmos.  This short story involves a nod from the star character of my books-my dad-prodding me from the great beyond.  Let me know if you agree that this sounds like a cosmic wink or feel free to share stories of your cosmic wink tales at joanie@joanieschirm.com

Schwarzenberg Palace, Vienna brass door hanger

The end of 2007 was a reflective time for me. In a month’s time, I was to sell my ownership in the Orlando engineering company I founded seventeen years earlier. Finally, I would transition to a writer’s life. The anticipation was high. So was my anxiety level about this significant life change. To reduce my stress, I tried to concentrate on a string of daily activities.  I spent the entire New Year Eve morning on the dismantlement of Christmas decorations for their annual storage in a small, already crowded closet under a stairway.

That morning, my husband Roger’s related job was to pack the decorations in the closet as best he could among other household goods.  As he arranged one container box upon another in the bulging space, I heard my husband observe:

“You know you really need to store your mother and grandmother’s antique silver pieces in a better way.  Two sharp prongs from the old serving fork are sticking out the side of the bag. Be careful.”

It was apparent when I stored the silver away after a recent family dinner, I’d jammed too many pieces into one of my mom’s two old brown felt bags. Now the fork made known my secret haste. I felt a twinge of guilt to improve the situation, but more importantly, the great Florida outdoors was calling me. I needed to go for my daily exercise walk.

As I’d done each morning for the preceding year in preparation for writing my dad’s story, I grabbed one of my father’s audio tapes to accompany me on the stroll. The tapes were my attempt to recapture stories he’d told endlessly during my youth. I’d forgotten a lot of what was recorded in 1989 and was refreshing my memory to see what I might incorporate into my books.

My neighborhood hikes over old brick streets provided grand opportunities to experience a kind of time-travel back to the mystical places my father talked about.  As his voice transported me, I disappeared into another era, and met relatives whose DNA created my features and blood ran through me.  The tales let me live through his 1930s and 40s wartime escapades along with accounts from his 1950 and 60s medical practice in Melbourne, Florida where I grew up.

Depending on the tape I was listening to, I could be on a steam-puffing train with armed Japanese soldiers occupying China in 1940 or, the next moment, with a rocket scientist my father knew in the 1960’s, shaping the Nation’s emerging space program in Central Florida.  As the pain of the Holocaust kept my dad from telling me much about his parents, stories from his happy childhood gave me a welcome, magical glimpse of what my grandparents Arnošt and Olga were like.   I never tired of hearing my father’s Czech-accented voice as my feet walked in Orlando, but my heart traveled all over the world encountering adventure.

Over the previous months of periodic listening to these audio tapes, I tended to dwell on the history of my father’s early years in Bohemia or China.  That winter day I felt like hearing something different, so I purposely chose a more contemporary, upbeat storyline period from my old home town. By the title, my dad wrote on the tape, “Melbourne,” I thought it would contain interesting cases from his medical practice.

As I walked the first two blocks, I listened to stories of engaging patients. I got to meet the famous architect Henry Hornbostel who designed the campus that is now Carnegie Mellon University and several iconic New York City bridges. Due to some prior military service, my dad called him “Major” Hornbostel. He apparently wintered in Melbourne Beach where he chose my father as his doctor. Like with so many other patients, they developed a friendship. I also ‘met’ Larry Sheldrick, a retired engine and chassis engineer who was involved in the original design of Ford Motor Company’s Model A.  Sheldrick, Ford’s Chief Engineer become a vice president in Detroit with both Ford and General Motors companies. His daughter, Bonnie DeKalb, was one of my mom’s best friends.  Next, on the tape, my dad switched briefly to a story about the Space Age that dawned near our home and his physician role to Werner von Braun among others.

Suddenly my father changed subjects. With a switch to a somber tone, I heard my dad say:

“In 1963 we went back to Czechoslovakia for the first time after the war.   This was a trip of mixed emotions.  My family in Czechoslovakia had vanished during the war.   Only the Marik  family survived…”

From previous times I’d listened to his recordings, I’d gotten used to my father jumping around with his stories, offering them up in no chronological order.  But on that morning promenade I hadn’t expected to amble into this point in his life when he would finally return for a visit to his native land – now dangerously controlled by the Communist Party behind what was known as the “Iron Curtain.” My own mood instantly adjusted as my pace slowed on the uneven bricks beneath my feet.

My dad’s storyline continued in a bittersweet manner with information about the Marik family before and after Nazi occupation ended in 1945. I knew after the Nazis attempted to carry out their “final solution,” the Marik family was among the few remaining Czech relatives stemming from the patriarch Holzer line.  Aunt Valerie “Vala” Marik was my grandfather Arnošt’s sister.  Miraculously, all four Marik family members – Vala, husband Jaroslav, and sons Jiri and Pavel – survived. They became my dad’s link to his vanished family. He stayed close to Aunt Vala’s family throughout his life, visiting them nine more times after the 1963 trip.

He described how his mother Olga’s silver was buried in an orchard at the Marik’s homestead after the Nazis issued a 1941 proclamation to Czechs to turn over their valuables, such as precious gold and silver. To hide what they had, my grandparents gave their silver and jewelry to Vala and Jaroslav. Uncle Jaroslav made a map based on the tree locations in the orchard beside his sawmill in their Bohemian village of Neveklov.  Between two trees he buried the valuables alongside a fine bottle of brandy to open when the war ended.

Soon, the Nazi forces kicked out all the residents of Neveklov and occupied their home, using it as a garrison hospital. Legend has it that the Nazis used the area to practice for their invasion of Belgium. Soon after the Mariks were evicted from their home, Uncle Jaroslav, who wasn’t Jewish, and his oldest son Jiri (George) were sent to different forced labor camps in Germany.  After six years of occupation, when the war finally ended for the Czechs in May 1945, the family returned to their home.

The property had been severely trashed, and the orchard mostly cut down for firewood. The map had been rendered useless. Overtime, Jaroslav and his sons dug there and finally recovered the silver collection, but they never found the brandy.  As my father said later when telling the story, the brandy was never meant to be found as there could not be a celebration with the lost relatives.  At the end of this particular story, my father described how he smuggled the silver out when my parents left Prague by train for Vienna on their way home to America.

My dad followed on with descriptions of the communist government that had taken over in a 1948 coup and its impact on the Marik family and others he knew.  As my feet continued to drift along streets lined by large shady oaks tousled with Spanish moss, I listened to fascinating tales from 1963 about my father’s reunion with old friends and classmates from Charles University medical school. Twenty-five years had elapsed since they’d last been together as young adults before the Nazis arrived.

One of these friends was his Charles University professor of chemistry, Dr. Jan Sula. After WWII, Dr. Sula married Helen Krulis-Randa, one of the debutants of their medical school balls.  Before the war, Helen’s old noble family had a number of manor houses and castles in south central Bohemia.   Her grandfather was a member of one of the 1800’s governments of Emperor Franz Josef of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In each major province like Bohemia, there was a representative in the government of the Emperor known as a “Home Minister.”  Her father was one of these representatives and also President of a stainless steel cartel in Prague. When the Communists came to power after World War II, they picked him up and put him in jail in Prague. The poor man was a very severe diabetic, and of course, the diet he received in prison was not exactly a diabetic diet.  They refused to give him his insulin, and he died in the Communist jail.   The estates and manor house were nationalized by the Communists.  In 1963 when my father and mother arrived, Helen’s mother was living in small, cold water flat in the old part of Prague.

Since my father had known her before the war, Helen wanted my dad and mother to see her while they were in Prague so one afternoon they went for a visit.  The visit was a really painful experience for my father. She was of the generation of his parents, and he was once again reminded of all that had been lost.   This cultured old woman was living in a one-room apartment, a rather large room with a small kitchen and outside toilet, used by a half dozen people with similar apartments on the floor.

Helen’s mother had furnished her apartment with some of the most beautiful antiques that came from their old castles, somehow miraculously saved through the war.  There were three large wardrobes in this vast sprawling room which she used as room dividers to separate space.   In this manner, she had laid out a living room and bedroom.  She still had a collection of beautiful antique porcelain and gorgeous Renaissance paintings hanging on the dingy walls.

When my parents told Mrs. Krulis-Randa that they were going to Vienna after their visit to Prague, she asked my father whether he would take a letter to Vienna for her friend, Duke Schwarzenberg, still living at the Schwarzenberg Palace which originally had opened in 1725. As it happened, one wing of this grand old palace was made into a hotel, and my parents had previously reserved a room for their future stay in Vienna. They agreed to the mission of mercy. The day before they left Prague, Helen Sula delivered to my parent’s hotel the letter from her mother for the Duke Schwarzenberg.

After my father had described on the tape that he’d agreed to deliver the message, he went on to tell several other stories about their train trip from Prague to Vienna. I anxiously listened on, wanting to know if the letter made it to the Duke. At last, he described their arrival in Vienna at the Schwarzenberg Palace.

“I asked at the reception desk where I could see the Duke Schwarzenberg.  They looked at me kind of suspiciously.   Finally, someone said, “Why do you want to see the Duke?”  I said that I had a letter for him.   Arrangements were made for the following day to go to see the Duke.  I was informed that I should wear a dark suit when I went to see the Duke.  Ordinarily, I go around Europe in flannel slacks and sports jacket, but I always carry some better suits so we can go to the opera or something like that.  I got all dressed up, shined my shoes, and went for the appointment.

At the entrance to the palace, I was met by a footman in the proper uniform.   He led me upstairs to the second floor where I was met by the Duke’s secretary who was a middle aged gentleman in a dark cutaway suit.  He instructed me how to behave on my entrance to the Duke’s study.   I was supposed to enter and walk to the desk where he was sitting.  I should stand up behind the desk but not to say anything until the Duke addressed me.   I followed his instructions, but as soon as I entered the room, the Duke got up, walked toward me and shook my hand.  Then he took me to his desk and asked me to sit down.  I handed him the letter which he immediately opened and started to read.  He stared making all kinds of comments in German.  Then he turned to me and started talking in perfect Oxford English.  He asked me how things were in Prague, whether I met his cousin.  When I told him I got the letter through Mrs. Krulis-Randa, he said, “Well, how is the old girl?”  After a short conversation, he said, “I detect some accent in your English.  Do you speak German?”  I said “yes” and from then on we conversed in German.  I stayed there for about ten minutes.  Then we got up and he walked with me to the door and shook hands again.”     

Obviously recalling this exchange with great pleasure, my father closed with:

“And so that is how I ended my audience with the Duke Schwarzenberg.”

As often happened when I listened to the tapes, I walked home feeling as if I’d had a fine morning meeting with my late father.  Although some of our time together included sad aspects, most of it made me joyful for what life entails – extraordinary and ordinary happenings of life.

When I returned home, I decided to take some constructive action to store my Mother’s silver pieces in a more deserving manner.  I pulled the brown felt bags from the closet and laid them on the dining room table, carefully removing each silver piece.  I enjoyed thinking about how some of these were my Grandmother Olga’s secretly buried silver pieces. Somehow they went undiscovered by the rotten Nazi’s as they carried out shooting practice unknowingly standing atop them; a small piece of justice in a world mad with injustice.

It was customary for my Mother in the 1950s to carefully wrap her silver pieces with white tissue paper. It was believed then that the tissue would protect it from tarnishing. Upon my inheritance of this share of family heirlooms, I couldn’t bring myself to dispose of the tissues my mother chose to protect them. So the paper remained in place.  Within the two felt bags were various items I’d never used – like old silver cigarette lighters and small sugar plates. It had been a long time since I polished anything in the bags. I decided it was time to remove all the belongings and reverse their tarnished condition.

As I laid them on our dining room table, I came across something I hadn’t noticed before. In a thicker-then-usual piece of white paper was something brass, not silver.  As I removed it, I held what appeared to be an old doorknocker.   On the front top half, carved in great detail, was a man riding a horse. The horse and his rider were perched atop an emblem of sorts which had the number “8” engraved on it.  Holding it in my hands rubbing its beautiful brass, I found myself smirking. Apparently, at some time in his extensive world travels, my father must have “lifted” this doorknocker.  It seemed uncharacteristic for him and definitely was not my mother’s style. Staring at the doorknocker for a long minute, I wondered how the item made it into the silver collection.

And then it happened. I turned the doorknocker around to look at its backside and there, etched in the brass in black letters was:

Hotel Palais

Schwarzenberg

I loudly gasped, and my body shook.

Sitting nearby, my husband asked what happened.  I described the story I’d just listened to on tape and what I now held in my trembling hands.

Roger smiled as he calmly replied. “That is clearly your father telling you that you need to get busy writing his stories.”  

{Wish granted: 2013 – Adventurers Against Their Will published and won the 2013 Global Ebook Award for Best Biography; 2017 finished manuscript for My Dear Boy (not yet published); two more related books underway in my writing room}

This week has been particularly special as I found myself among like-minded women who value world history, protecting human rights, American democracy, and our core values. They get the importance of freedom of the press. They understand how today welcoming immigrants who are in great danger is as important as it was in the day that America welcomed my endangered refugee-Czech dad. And the thought among us of someone or something causing war, has a way of distinguishing between the things that matter and the things that don’t.

Thank you to hostess Holly Phelps and her book club friend Shastidy Ellerbusch who helped instigate the meeting. And great appreciation to Holly and her mom Jackie McLean for providing a follow-up reference from this particular day:

“Thank you for attending our book club and sharing the inspiration for writing your award winning book “Adventurers Against Their Will.”  You are both an accomplished writer as well as an engaging speaker.  The WWII experiences of your family and their friends provide an amazing and engrossing story for readers.  Your presentation emphasizes the importance of staying vigilant about whom we elect into office.  Our freedom is a great gift that all Americans should do everything in our power to protect.  Thank you again, and we look forward to reading your next book.”

Book Clubs make life better.

—Holly Phelps and Jackie McLean

And the gifts continue; dribbling in through emails to my author account, or from Facebook, or LinkedIn.  Here’s a recent example which I cherish because I can be of help to this email writer. I can connect her with several of the ‘sources’ I found as I went in search across the globe for some of the writers of my dad’s secret WWII letter collection.  Along my writing journey, the people I meet also teach me from what they know. I love the chance to keep learning.

Although my father spent the greatest number of years living in the United States, he never forgot that he was born in Bohemia. He was Czech and American and bestriding the best of both. For nine years, I’ve studied both cultures and now acknowledge the virtues of each. It lies in the people’s hearts and experiences and how they rise to the occasion to overcome difficulties and injustice.  Here’s a note that relays both. For those who’ve read Adventurers, you will learn more also.

Subject: Adventures: The Neuman Family & Franta Seba

Dear Joanie,

As a 1949 post putsch refugee from Communist Czechoslovakia, I am interested in all things Czech. Of particular interest to me is the era that drove my parents from their beloved home and wonderful life in Mlada Boleslav to various refugee camps including a former Panzer Caserne in West Germany, then onto West Pakistan where they served in the newly formed Medical Corps of the Pakistani Army, and, ultimately, to Flushing New York. There my grandmother, Marie Provaznikova, first President of the Women’s Olympic Committee and first defector in search of freedom during the 1948 Olympic Games in London, awaited them. She, too, worked for Radio Free Europe and Voice of America upon landing in NY, as did your father’s friend Karel S.

Our story, too, with an escape through the woods of Sumava, is a riveting one.

I loved reading your book aloud to my family while driving to a Christmas celebration on Sunday. As I read to my daughter, I commented on things to which I strongly related. I mentioned that the name Schoenbaum seemed familiar, but I could not place it. We finished two chapters and arrived at our destination.

Last night I picked it up again.

Imagine my delight and surprise when I got to the Dramatis Personae of Chapter 3 and came to brother “Franta”, then Anka Neuman, followed by Vera and Jarmila. Kamil sealed the deal. These were dear family friends in Schenectady, NY with whom we had lost touch over the years. We did see them off on their move to Florida. As I write, I look at a large armoire brought from Czechoslovakia in the 30’s and purchased from them at their departure “garage sale.” There is also a Benda nude, a small sterling plate among other things purchased. Kamil was my sometimes naughty family physician, the Newmans danced at my wedding, my mother and I shopped with Anka for “rags” ( hadry) at a local discount quality clothing store, my mother also was at Kamil’s bedside when he died; we did stay with the Schoenbaum’s in Mexico City when on vacation there in the early 60’s, and Franta…that is another story! I have at least a dozen paintings my father purchased from him once my parents started returning annually to their beloved home land in the mid to late 60’s. Some of the paintings were shown at the Manes Gallery. And, yes, Franta did visit our home in Altamont, NY, and hit on me, a naive 27 year old, as I traveled to Beirut via Prague in 1971 on my way to teaching at the American Community School. When we knew him, he was called Franta Seba. I am certain that he is the same person in the letters: rude, vulgar, funny, affectionate, loveable…a tragic figure in so many ways.

Is Jerry ( Jarmila) still alive? Would you be kind enough to send contact information if she is? I did google Vera some time ago and learned that she was no longer with us.

Also, did you come across anything in your research regarding Franta’s art dealing career? Please let me know if there is any info that is to be found on this area.

One more thing: I have been fully bilingual since the age of 7. Here are some words that are perplexing in translation:

I assume that “ass” is “prdel”. But “prdel” is so much stronger and more powerful and vulgar than “ass.” In some ways it is almost untranslatable. I think “asshole” might have more of an impact. A “prdel” is, in fact, an anus.

“Ty vole” literally means, “you bull.” Typically, however, it has nothing to do with things bovine or studly, but is an affectionate insult that would translate to “you idiot.” When someone is called a “vul,” it means that the person is stupid or an idiot, maybe even an asshole. It is no manly compliment.

Thank you so much for writing this incredible memoir. I cannot wait to finish it and will more than likely reread it often.

It would be fun to speak with or even meet you if you ever are in the Northeast. Let me know if you are ever near Northampton, Massachusetts or Altamont, NY.

As to the Newman home/office on Crane Street in Schenectady, it is now a halfway house for drug rehabilitation.

Thanks again,

Anna (another Andula)

Ruth Alice Lequear in 1946 – Joanie Holzer Schirm’s Mom

Each New Year for me is a little bittersweet.  I always yearn for great optimism and hope for the coming year, but a piece of that feeling fell away when seventeen years ago I lost my mother – Ruth Alice Lequear, known affectionately by many as “Chick” or to her grandchildren as “Chickie.” It was on this day, January 1, at the turn of the millennia, she slipped away to the other side following a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease.  I miss her each day while she’s over there and I’m over here.  I’ve yet to meet someone who in my eyes can match her sweet, gentle spirit and magnanimity that came from her beautiful soul.

I feel her nearness every day and believe her soaring soul from that other world still makes her a mother in spirit. For that, I’m forever appreciative— and hopeful —just as my Mom encouraged me to greet every New Year.  Happy New Year to all.

International Human Rights Day

For the past sixty-eight years, the world has celebrated the December 10^th anniversary of the 1945 United Nations General Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With the fresh recognition of what humans can do to one another following the horrific evidence of the Holocaust, the historic UN act promoted the publicizing of the Declaration text. It reads: “to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories.” Now in 438 different languages and dialects, the document holds the Guinness World Record for being the most translated document in the world.

And yet, even with strong Constitutional protections in America, in a 2015 United Nations report, the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out cases of criminal justice, national security, immigration policy and social and economic rights violations. Compared to other liberal democracies, the ACLU reported the US has comparatively a “poor record of upholding basic rights.”

Human rights are not simply a privilege. As a human being, these are certain fundamental rights you should not be denied. Here are ten of the most well-known of the thirty universal rights contained in the UN document. They include the right to trial, the right to a nationality, the right to privacy, the right to peaceful public assembly, the right to own property, the right to education, freedom of expression, freedom from slavery, the right to seek asylum and the right to get married and start a family.

When I think of the importance of protecting human dignity for the whole human family, my mind always plays the lyrics from John Lennon’s song: Imagine.  Look up the words and see how you feel about it. This shouldn’t be such a tough challenge, but injustices continue to play out in America and around the world.

By telling true stories from my family history which includes injustices that caused the loss of life of family and friends, property, and homeland, I’ll never stop working for the protection of human dignity and rights. The path to the goal is education – of the young and old.

Learn more about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Documents/UDHR_Translations/eng.pdf

http://www.un.org/en/udhrbook/pdf/udhr_booklet_en_web.pdf

For more about what’s happening around the world about deterioration of Human Rights:

http://www.voanews.com/a/alarming-deterioration-of-human-rights-worldwide/3617235.html