Setting the Voices Free

Part 2 in the Series 

As the years slipped away during the writing of My Dear Boy, one thing became crystal clear. My journey of research and writing was dramatically enhanced by the people who often serendipitously came aboard for the ride and then remained my friends to the journey’s end.

What follows in this Part II, is an introduction to Tom Weiss, number two of the key individuals who helped set free the seventy-eight voices of the four hundred World War II letters my beloved father, Oswald “Valdik” Holzer, hid away after the war. Translators, experts, travel guides, administrators, archivists, and more, each with full heart, played an indelible role.

Tom Weiss

Before the age of sixty, Tom (Fischer) Weiss of Newton, Massachusetts, had little interest in his family history. He thought it would be nearly impossible to research his family in Europe because many had vanished in the Holocaust, and he assumed no records existed. His interest changed when serendipitously, in 1996, Tom had a conversation with a second cousin on his mother’s side who mentioned he’d been in touch with Tom’s first cousin in Wales. Tom was shocked to know he had a first cousin, much less one in Wales. Alena Morgan née Fischer was the daughter of Tom’s father’s brother. Until that time Tom didn’t even know that his father, Rudolf “Rudla” Fischer, had a brother. When long-distance communication was established Alena told him Rudla had a cousin in sunny Florida whose name was Valdik Holzer. Valdik’s mother, Olga, was a sister to Tom’s grandmother, Karolina. Through this lineage, Tom Weiss and I share great-grandparents, Jakub and Teresia (née Vodickova) Orlík. When Alena described Valdik’s adventures in China, Tom remembered he’d seen photographs of someone in China in his mother’ photo album. When he looked at them, he saw they were marked as Valdik.

When I first heard about this new second cousin who’d arrived on the scene, I was somewhat suspicious. I was thinking about newspaper articles I read in which the story about a long lost relative didn’t turn out so well. My father assured me that Tom was indeed not a con man but my cousin, the son of a person who at that time I had never heard of. Over the next year, through my dad, I was to discover much about the background of Tom’s disappearance during World War II. I was also to learn of Tom’s impressive dedication to uncovering all he could about his past. By the time we met, he’d already traveled to archives in Bad Arolsen, Germany, Vienna, Austria, Ukraine, Poland, and the Czech Republic for his family tree detective work.

His story was another war tale that reminded me of how far-reaching the devastation had been to families worldwide. Well beyond the death camp horrors and the battlefield casualties, for a myriad of reasons innocent families fractured and fell apart. Much of Tom’s experience had echoes of today’s tumultuous world of forcibly displaced persons. Tom’s story, when I met him, was one with heartbreaking residual effects that he was still dealing with. Unraveling the story of his life as a small boy, the adult Tom was trying to understand what and had happened and why.

In May 1999 Tom and his wife, Aurice, met my father in Florida. Tom had already been in contact by telephone for a couple of years. In those conversations he was catching up on what had happened sixty years earlier, when Tom, only four and a half years old, and his parents fled from Prague to Néris-les-Bains, France, saving themselves from the fate of so many other Jewish relatives who stayed behind. I was visiting my mother in her assisted living care home the weekend Tom and Aurice visited my father. Luckily, I had the chance to meet my old-new cousin. Instantly we forged a bond of friendship, sparked by a shared obsession for genealogical research.

Intrigued by my father’s excellent memory, Tom audiotaped his interviews, as I had done a decade earlier. A year later, after my father’s untimely death, Tom shared the tapes with me. Within the conversations were impressions from painful remembrances that I had not heard before, coupled with stories of long-ago happy times. He also sent me the photo of my father that had been in their family album. He said it arrived to his then refugee family living in France sometime between February and April 1940, just before the German invasion of the Low Countries and France. Tom also sent me a massive 2½ x 5–foot scroll of a family tree of the Vodicka branch going back to 1720—research about our great-grandmother Teresia’s ancestry. His hard work was critically helpful as I struggled to identify over three hundred names mentioned in the four hundred letters my father had hidden away.

In turn I shared with Tom the letters written from 1939 and 1941 in Czech between our fathers, detailing what his parents’ lives were like during their exile in France. They were living in a small village, thinking that after fleeing from Nazi-occupied Bohemia, it was a safe haven. That thought was shattered when Germany quickly defeated France. Tom provided me information about how Rudla had joined the Czech army in France, and after the German invasion in April and May 1940 of Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands, Rudla was called up to join the British army. By September 1940, after the fall of France, his father was in England but not with his family.

Unfortunately, for reasons we will never know for sure, Rudla left his wife and son behind in France, and with great difficulty and peril, they made their way south to Marseille. After being refugees in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal for an adventurous and sometimes harrowing twenty months—most of it in France—Tom’s mother was able to attain entry visas and ship passage to America for her and her son. Nearly destitute, they settled in New York City.

In 1947 Rudla and Erna received a divorce. Upon his mother’s remarriage in New York City to Eugene Weiss, a Hungarian immigrant, Tom became Eugene’s adopted son and took his name. Except for a little correspondence, after his adoption, Tom was estranged from Rudla for the remainder of his life.

In 2008 Alena translated the exchange of letters between Tom and my fathers. Although the letters brought Tom information he didn’t know, such as the exact date in 1939 when his family reached France and an appreciation for the warm affection in our fathers’ relationship, the letters opened old wounds, forcing Tom to relive painful feelings from his childhood. We often communicated, sharing our emotions over what the letters had revealed to us. After reading one translated letter from August 1941, about the mystery of Rudla’s abandonment of his family, Tom commented:

The letter did make me sad. But I have mixed feelings about it. I think he did care deeply for my mother, but I also think he felt guilty about abandoning us in France and leaving us in a very precarious situation. But who knows what anyone would do in such situations?

I am also taken aback at the thought expressed in the letter that my mother did not really need any help. She worked in a sweatshop in New York’s garment district, and I recall she worked five full weekdays and a half-day on Saturday. I would go with her on Saturday since she had no one to take care of me. It was very difficult work and took its toll on her health. She died just before her forty-fourth birthday.

As Tom read German, he became my go-to translator for German documents except for those written in the old German cursive style known as Kurrent. Tom informed me that Hitler had outlawed Kurrent around 1941 because he characterized it as being of Jewish origin.

We both wondered why our fathers let their relationship dissipate after the war. We weren’t even sure if they had ever met again. Long before our modern world’s many available avenues of communication, Tom’s summary described the story of so many broken family bonds after the war: “I think maintaining relations is hard over such large distances and large time separations. Both my father and yours carved out new lives and went their separate ways.” Thankfully, our relationship grew, and Tom and I were given the opportunity to continue the extended family bond when he and Aurice visited Roger and me at our Florida home in 2010.

www.joanieschirm.com  Order MY DEAR BOY anywhere books are sold.   Or through my publisher, UNL Potomac Books,  use code 6AS19 for 40% off.

Benesov Mayor Marik greets Tomas Masaryk at Benesov Rail Station

https://youtu.be/MZgf8l56tQg  In this video from 1918, at about 8:10 minutes, the Mayor of Benesov, my dad’s Czech hometown, greets Tomas M. Masaryk returning from exile during WWI to become the president of the newly former Czechoslovakia. At the time my dad was six years old. My father’s aunt Valda was married to Jaroslav Marik, the son of the Mayor.  In the 1960s, when my father was visiting Czechoslovakia, Uncle Jaroslav, knowing my dad collected hats, gave him the top hat that Mayor Marik wore on that day.  After my father’s death in 2000, I chose the hat as part of my inheritance as I knew what it meant to my father. I intend someday to return the hat to the Marik family, a family I’ve gotten to know well through my writing journey and multiple family reunions, hosted at great Aunt Valda and Uncle Jaroslav’s Neveklov home, passed down in their family to their grandsons.

Excerpted from Arnošt Holzer’s June 20, 1941 letter from Prague, in Nazi-occupied German territory, to Long Beach, California to his only child, Osvald “Valdik” Holzer.

Valdik, the next month you will celebrate your thirtieth birthday. This is a milestone in everyone’s life. You will celebrate it away from us so our thoughts will be with you . . . Ruth will certainly remember the day nicely and will, at least in part, make up to you for what we cannot do for you.

Unfortunately, a bad fate forces us to spend several years of your life without you. You know how we loved being with you and that we now must miss what was the most beautiful thing in our life and, in fact, for so long the purpose of our lives. Only the hope that the day will come when we can hug you again gives us the strength to bear all the hardship that we must.

A note added to the letter by Valdik’s mother, Olga:

I read what your dad wrote, and it was as if he wrote my thoughts from my soul exactly. You know best what you mean to us, and with such a festive day coming, I am always with you in my mind. I join the wish of your father and wish you lots of good luck and all the success in life for your next thirty years.

One year later Valdik’s parents Arnošt and Olga perished in a Nazi death camp, likely Sobibor in Poland.

Joanie Holzer Schirm

www.joanieschirm.com

MY DEAR BOY publication by Potomac Books in early 2019.   Sign up www.joanieschirm.com for Author Alerts.

My ‘free’ time spent with family history research almost always uncovers some ‘a-ha’ moment.  About two years ago a man named James in Tennessee read my first book, Adventurers Against Their Will. While dabbling in his own family history, James discovered we shared a relative: Ferdinand William Breth.  For me, Ferdinand Breth lives eternally in my dad’s old WWII letter collection.  Known to my Bohemian father as “Uncle Bill,” Ferdinand Breth is for me a first cousin twice removed from the Czech lands of my paternal heritage. Or to paint a picture from my twisted tree:  Ferdinand’s mother Teresie was my great grandfather Alois’ sister.

Uncle Bill, a chemist, living in Pennsylvania in 1941, helped my dad both financially and emotionally when my father and mother arrived in America from China. Uncle Bill’s letters to my father during 1941, before the US entered World War II, were especially intriguing. They detail Uncle Bill’s contact with desperate Jewish relatives in the Czech lands and his attempts to pay monies to bring them to safety.  In all cases, he failed as the Nazis tightened their hold and began to deport them to concentration camps. Uncle Bill’s heartbreaking letters detail his suspicion that the Nazis were extorting the Jews of the money that U.S. relatives sent to facilitate escape. Sadly, none of the relatives Uncle Bill names in the letters were able to leave, and all perished in the Holocaust.

James’ niece Heather has the genealogy bug as I do and we’ve shared information. Over time, she and James have photocopied a meticulous diary kept by Uncle Bill. All entries involving people, places, photographs, or other noteworthy things are cross-referenced in ten-year indexes (Deciniums).  The document will be preserved by a museum in Baltimore.  Since several of the entries involved my father, James shared them with me including recently this one with a photo of my dad I’d never seen before from my parents’ time in California (1941-42).

Ferdinand Breth “Uncle Bill” October 1941 entry into his diary regarding Valdik Holzer

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}

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.

What does a Shuttle astronaut, an honorary Brevard County Historian, the wife of a Florida former poet laureate and Joanie Holzer Schirm have in common?  Nothing that I, Joanie, can figure out until February 20, 2015 comes around.  That’s when we, along with some other illustrious authors will read from our books or poems at a Florida Institute of Technology hosted evening event at Evans Library in Melbourne, Florida.

Normally, the life of a writer is a solitary one. At least for me it is as I need total silence to place my words correctly on the computer screen that later produces the word doc that turns into my books.  I’m not one of those writers who has a jazz playing in the background or allows my husband to spend much time in my writing room. I need peace and quiet.

But when an occasion comes up with a willing audience on hand for me to read aloud what I wrote while in hibernation, it feels darn good.  Why? Because as a writer I suffer constant self-doubt. This style event becomes an indicator that someone cares about my work or some tiny piece of it. Just the invitation proves the work must be acceptable beyond the four corners of my writing room. Right?

FIT is a special place for me…it’s where my father, Oswald A. Holzer, MD donated ten years of his life as the Campus Doctor after he retired from his private medical practice.  He built the Student Health program from scratch, donated his salary and time, and then, to top it off;  he and my Mom, Ruth Alice Lequear Holzer established the Holzer-Lequear Endowment for FIT to help students gain their education. It is only fitting that on February 20th  I would speak about the star of my books – my dad. I’ll provide a tiny bit about the backstory of his life before FIT from some readings from my book, Adventurers Against Their Will.

So if you want to help build confidence in a writer (Andrew Aberdein, Ben Brotemarkle, Weona Cleveland, Marcia Denius, Joddy Murray, Winston Scott, Louise Skellings, Scott Tilley, and me), please share your time on February 20, 2015 – 6 – 9 pm at FIT’s Evans Library.  It’s free, and there will be refreshments.

Ann Scott, Florida First Lady with Joanie Schirm

January 26, 2015: On a perfect sunny day, with music, dance, drama, and book character impersonations, students, staff and dignitaries from Orange County, Florida’s Timber Creek High School kicked off Celebrate Literacy Week, Florida!  Florida Department of Education’s annual event celebrates the tremendous success Florida’s students have accomplished over the past decade. Recognizing “reading accelerates success”, FDOE’s Just Read Florida staff created an environment of magic when hundreds of students in attendance silently read from their books as the Timber Creek Orchestra performed. Their five minute reading was all a part of the Million Minute Marathon goal of 36 million minutes of reading statewide!   As a part of the FDOE 2015 Celebrate Literacy Week Recommended Reading List for Grades 9-12, Adventurers Against Their Will is now in the hands of Florida’s First Lady, Mrs. Ann Scott.

Celebrate Literacy Week, Florida! is a week-long celebration from Jan. 26 – 30, 2015, geared toward raising awareness for literacy programs and projects offered by the Department of Education’s Just Read, Florida! office, and its partner agencies and organizations. The week’s events are made possible by these participating sponsors: Florida Lottery; National Geographic; Dairy Council of Florida, a Division of Florida Dairy Farmers; Scholastic; Florida Department of Health; Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles and the Kennedy Space Center. The Department of Education actively works with community groups and volunteers throughout the state to make reading a priority in students’ lives. For more information about Just Read, Florida!, visit www.justreadflorida.com.

Earned 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 suggested: “Freed Spirit/Writer.”   As I unleashed my creativity, the title inspired me on as an author-in-the-making.  Soon, in a treasure trove of my dad’s secret WWII letter collection, I discovered real life characters with extraordinary stories of survival, escape, and connection. The life-changing experiences of these Czech refugees was brought on by modern history’s most brutal demagogue, Adolf Hitler. Within 5 years, my dad’s correspondents’ tales filled the pages of my first nonfiction book: Adventurers Against Their Will.

In my most contemplative and creative moments as a rookie, I could never have imagined what lay ahead as I earned the title:  Author.  Here are just a few memorable milestones along the way:

2008 – As I researched and began writing my father’s epic WWII tale in a yet to be published book, I uncovered a few correspondents from dad’s letter collection still alive. Old friends from the youth of my late father, I traveled to meet them and delivered copies of their 70-year old letters.  All were stunned and very appreciative. Scattered worldwide in places like New Zealand, Canada, Great Britain, Czech Republic, and the USA, I found descendants of the letter writers.  As time was of the essence to locate these people and discover our commonalities, I turned my attention away from writing my dad’s epic WWII story and wrote what became my debut book: Adventurers Against Their Will. 

December 2012:  After reading advance chapters from the book, Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, provides a cover quote.   “A brilliant and compelling account of men and women caught in the turbulence of war. Part insightful history, and part family drama…it leads readers on a journey into the past.”  Her letter arrived on my birthday.

April 2013 – The book launch for Adventurers Against Their Will is held with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and other friends at Orlando City Hall. The celebration of print and EBook versions includes donation of 100 books to Central Florida libraries.  Harvey Massey and Massey Services sponsor the book distribution.

October 2013 – Adventurers Against Their Will wins the 2013 Global EBook Award for Best Biography and Best Book Trailer. The powerful storytelling video book trailer is made possible by Bolder Media.

2013/2014 – Numerous Author speaking engagements include: Palm Beach County Public Schools’ annual Social Studies Teacher Symposium; Scottsdale, Arizona keynote, Educators Conference on the Holocaust, Yom HaShoah Keynote at Holocaust  Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida.

September 2014:  Prague, Czech Republic: TRITON books publishes Adventurers Against Their Will in the Czech language: Dobrodruzi proti své vůli.   Media blitz includes Schirm interviews with leading Czech TV and Radio Praha programs along with other print and e-zine media. After speaking at the US Embassy in Prague (American Center), Schirm gives a lecture about the book at Prague’s Gymnázium Špitálská (high school).

September 2014: Frankfurt, Germany:  The International Tracing Service (ITS), Bad Arolsen, includes the story of Joanie’s father, Dr. Oswald “Valdik” Holzer, in German exhibit. Recounting the stories of Displaced Persons after WWII, Dr. Holzer is the only featured biography wiht a Czech background and one of only 3 American citizens. Joanie and husband Roger Neiswender proudly attend the Exhibit opening at Frankfurt’s Anne Frank Educational Center.

January 2015:  Florida Department of Education chooses Adventurers Against Their Will for 2015 FDOE Recommended Reading list for grades 9-12 as part of Celebrate Literacy week and Just Read, Florida! summer reading.  Alongside classics like To Kill a Mockingbird and A Separate Peace, Orlando author Joanie Holzer Schirm’s book is the only nonfiction set in WWII on the FDOE list and the only native Floridian author!

Adventurers‘ stories prepare students to be compassionate and active citizens, through gained awareness of the importance of protecting human rights. Using primary souce material, students build their research skills and reflect on their own lived experiences as it relates to building a more just world honoring our shared humanity.

What’s next? February 2015:  For Teachers:  Lesson Plans to accompany Adventurers Against Their Will (prepared by APass Educational Group). Free download coming soon on www.joanieschirm.local

2015 Goal: Complete manuscript for book 2:  My Dear Boy – The Discovery of a Lifetime

May your 2015 be filled with unleashed creativity and accomplishments under whatever life title you hold!  

Regards,   Joanie Holzer Schirm