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.

“It’s not the “retirement” Joanie Schirm imagined. A family mystery turned into a global quest, a journey of discovery, and a personal transformation into an internationally respected scholar, teacher, and author. Her new book MY DEAR BOY is a great read and a powerful reminder of the dangers of human aggression and intolerance and the power of love and compassion.  Check out Joanie’s Website for more information on her book.

Watch Growing Bolder video for an excellent backstory to the making of MY DEAR BOY – plus a window into the mission I’m on to help ensure we achieve a big goal: build a world without hate.

The Family Mystery That Turned Into a Global Quest

“They called it Tea” …Overcoming Indifference that Enables Hate to Flourish

January 27, 2015 marks the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.  This year’s United Nations Holocaust Memorial Day theme “Liberty, Life, and the Legacy of the Holocaust Survivors,”  reminds me of the importance of recording the words of the few remaining Holocaust survivors alive today.

Over the past seven years, as an author I’ve delved into a family past scarred by the Holocaust. On my paternal side, in the Holzer family line, we lost forty-four relatives in the Holocaust. Through my communication outreach for my debut book, Adventurers Against Their Will, I’ve connected with many people who choose to share their timeless words as eyewitnesses to this horrific period of history.  Their only hope is to transform memory into action to overcome the indifference that enables the hate to flourish.  In honor of Holocaust Memorial Day, 27th January 2015, I’d like to share the story of John Freund, Toronto, Canada.

My virtual relationship with John Freund began on April 28, 2014 after I sent a mass email through the electronic mail service tied to my author website. The assembled email list is from various sources that show interest in my book or its subject matter. The title of that day’s missive:  “How can we make peace in our world? One hopeful idea.”   Soon after it took wings, I received John’s first note.

Hello jschirm,

My name is John Freund; I am a Holocaust survivor. My hometown was C.Budejovice (Budweis) in Czechoslovakia.

My earliest “girlfriend” was Rita Holzer. If you happen to be related to the Holzer family of my hometown, let me know and I will send you a book (The Underground Reporters) that has several photos of the Holzer daughters.

John Freund in Toronto.    

I responded to John with information that I had not thus far identified a relative with the name “Rita Holzer” nor a family link to the village Budweis.  I included extensive family tree information that I’d compiled on Geni.com.

John responded with a list of Holzer’s in his hometown, but none of the names seemed to connect us.  He told me all of them had perished in the Holocaust. John pointed out there was a Chief Fireman named Leo Holzer in Terezin, (Theresienstadt), the Nazi concentration camp in northeast Bohemia where in early WWII, as a child  John was held captive. It was where most of my Holzer relatives had been sent, including my grandparents and great-grandmother. My grandmother died there. The rest of the forty-three relatives had been sent on to the ‘east’ to Poland, where they perished in one of the Nazi’s concentration or death camps.   My great uncle Leo Holzer was at Terezin at the identical time as the Leo Holzer that John mentioned, but he was not the same person.

Through that connection we determined John was at Terezin at the same time as my great Uncle Leo’s son, Hanus Holzer. John remembered that he and Hanus were in different rooms in the Terezin “skola” (school).   As life would have it, these two ‘boys’ would meet again in 2014 in Prague, after watching a documentary by Czech schoolboy filmmaker Matouš Bičák about Holocaust survivor Toman Brod.

As our Florida to Canada email relationship blossomed, we wrote each other several emails talking about our backgrounds and my growing awareness of 1930’s and 40’s life in the Czech lands. I was very intrigued to learn about what happened to Holocaust survivors as they recreated their lives post-WWII.

August 20, 2014:

 Hello Joanie,

Thanks for your lovely letter. I did not mean to insult you by the religious bit. I also grew up, like your father in an agnostic (or very liberal) Jewish family in Czechoslovakia.

I wish that my father (a Medical Doctor) was as smart as yours. Instead, we (four in our family, I was the youngest) ended in hell. I was the only one that survived (not fifteen yet).

I also wrote about my “adventures” in Terezin, Auschwitz and death marches.  

I also understand that some survivors wanted to hide their religion. I did not and I met a lovely Jewish girl, born in Czechoslovakia. We now have three daughters and ten grandchildren.  

Your life story is different.

John Freund

In late 2014, John sent me the book he wrote, “Spring’s End”   Then, in early January 2015 after one of my mass emails sharing book progress news, John sent me a note. He pointed out that when I referred to my father as a refugee in the email, I had not used the word Jewish to describe his plight.  Clearly, it was because of that reason – declared an undesirable by Hitler – Dad was by mid-1939 in Shanghai, China seeking refuge.

The next day John sent me a speech he’d just delivered about his Holocaust experience.

On use for this 2015 day of Remembrance for those who perished in the Holocaust, John gave me permission to share his speech and a family photo from the 1930s and John’s 2014 photo:

Speech by John Freund in Toronto, January 11, 2015, Holy Blossom Temple (a Reform Jewish Synagogue)

They Named it Tea
“I was born in 1930 in a small town named Ceske Budejovice in Czechoslovakia.  It is better known by its German name, Budweis, because of the famous Budweiser Beer.  The town is just about 50 km from Austria, which had been occupied by the aggressive German forces, led by one of the greatest dictators in history-Adolf Hitler. His crazy claim to conquer all Europe and wipe out all the Jews and other undesirables was clearly expressed in his public policy.

In Budweis, the entire population of fifty thousand included about one thousand Jews. They spoke Czech and many also spoke German. They lived in the town, like all citizens, according to their economic position.

In March 1939, German forces invaded our country and instituted the Nuremberg anti-Jewish laws.  In September of the same year, they invaded Poland and the Second World War began. I was nine years old.

It was in April 1942 that the one thousand Jewish people were taken by train from our   home town to a town, named Terezin. This fortress town built in the eighteenth century by the Austrian Emperor was intended as a military establishment; it was named after his mother Empress Maria Teresa. In German it is called Theresienstadt.

I was then not yet twelve years old.

The Jewish population of the Czech lands (Bohemia and Moravia) were to spend the war years in the large barracks and small homes in this town used as a Ghetto. Like everything else the German Nazis did it was a false mirage.

We were happy to be near our home towns; Terezin was just about 100 km north of Prague, the Capital of the country.

Soon, however the Nazi lie became apparent.

I was thirteen years old in Terezin and had a short Bar Mitzvah there. The 12 to 14-year-old boys lived together in a converted school and were able to meet their parents for about an hour each week.

The worst of the life in Terezin was the fear of transportation north east by train to Poland and beyond. There were about two thousand people at a time in each such transport. They included children, old people, the sick and complete families crowded into a cattle train for the trip.

No news ever was heard from those deported. They were either killed on arrival or put into some terrible concentration camp, where they died from starvation or illness.

My father was a children’s doctor and that kept us in Terezin a few months longer. But our time came in December 1943. Two cattle trains full of people with only a small  container for the toilet duties were dispatched to the unknown. The journey lasted eighteen hours with many stops-no one could leave the train on the way.

We were dislodged late at night in a place surrounded by armed SS men in their green uniforms. Dogs were howling and threatening anyone stepping out of line. Barbed wire fences, electrically charged, enclosed the large town full of wooden barracks.

Inmates wearing pajama like clothing told us that we were in Auschwitz Concentration Camp. To us this was like a summons to death.

Exhausted, hungry and filthy, we were led into a barrack where we were told to undress, go under a cold shower and drop all our possessions. Thus I lost the lovely Bar Mitzvah gifts from my parents:  A pendant watch and fountain pen. We were then tattooed, by a number on the left forearm and given very thin clothing. Then we were led-men separately from women into a large wooden barrack that was filled with three tier bunk beds. Six people were on each bed, just enough room for our bodies. I was thirteen and a half and was bedded with my father and three year older brother.

Up at 5:30, AM, early morning we were told to line up in rows of five for counting. Those who had died, and there were many old people there, were collected for burning.

This was done every day. Then we were given a pot of warm water; they named it tea. At noon we were given a pot of soup and a slice of black bread. In the evening again a tea and nothing else.

During the day, we were required to walk around in the cold weather and the stronger men were paving the narrow road between the thirty two wooden barracks.

There was a similar camp on the left side of our camp and another on the right side. But no others had women and men in the same camp, nor any children. Only our camp had families.

Enormously large factory buildings- there were four of those- on the side of the entire camp clearly visible by all. To our surprise, we found in our camp, people who were sent from Ghetto Terezin here a few months earlier. They spoke Czech, just like we did. They told us that we were in the Family Camp for Czech Jews deported from Terezin.

“What are these large buildings; do they produce bricks or are they large bakeries? “

Constant dark smoke was coming out of the very large chimneys. Day and night transports from all over Europe were arriving and right at the station selections by SS men chose only the strong to work in German factories and mines. The rest, all the older people, children and the sick were then killed.

To our disbelief, those were “gas chambers”. Most people – all Jews and some Gypsies were killed there and their bodies were burnt in the crematoria; that’s the black smoke.

Only those in the Family Camp were exempted from such a treatment.

Only later we founded why.

I was in that camp for 7 months from December 1943 to July 1944.

In March 1944- all those still alive in the Family Camp who had come on the transport in September 1943- were killed in the gas chambers. Just the day before that terrible murder, everyone in the camp was handed a post card which we were to address to our family or friends in Terezin or our friends in our home towns. The message, strictly censored was “we are well and healthy and with our family”. The return address was “Birkenau bei (on) Beroun”. NO SUCH ADDRESS could be found on any atlas or map.

The Birkenau camp was a section of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Approximately one and a half million Jews were killed there in the Gas chambers.

Why the different treatment in the Family Camp?

In June 1944 an order came from Berlin to liquidate the Family Camp.

Selections for strong men and women were begun who were then sent to do hard work in Germany. The rest of those in the Family Camp and that included my mother, my 85 year grandmother, an aunt and   all the children with their mothers, sick people —all together three thousand people—were killed by gas in the middle of July 1944.^.

Only a few of those sent to work survived the hard work and the death marches.  Neither my seventeen-year-old brother, nor my forty-five year old father survived.

Where was I?  Expecting the inevitable………..and then, on July 6^th , one month after my 14^th birthday, all fourteen to sixteen year old boys in the Family Camp were ordered to line up, in the nude for the Dr. Mengele who played God by choosing who shall live and who shall die.

Ninety boys out of the few hundred were selected for life. The rest were gassed with the rest of the camp.

Of the ninety boys of July 6^th, only about one half lived till the end of the war.

Now, what was the reason for the creation by the murderous Nazis of the one and only Family Camp?

Back in Ghetto Terezin, where I had spent 18 months before being sent to Auschwitz- Birkenau, the Germans agreed to a single visit by the Danish Red Cross and possibly another visit to a “labour camp”.

The Family Camp was created for the possibility of a further visit. Of course that would not be to Auschwitz Birkenau, where the gas chambers were so clearly visible, but the inmates of this camp could be located in many other places.

The other lie was the mailing of postcards to family members and friends … with the lie: We are healthy and with our family.

In October 1944, an armed revolt by the Jewish workers in the gas chambers took place.

This ended by the death of most of those who took up arms in the revolt.   Those that survived the massacre were then commanded to take down, brick by brick, the installation of the gas chambers and the crematoria.

Gun battles now raged near the Auschwitz camps. The Russian were battling the German forces.

On January 17^th 1945, almost exactly seventy years ago today the camps were liberated by the Russians.  But I was no longer there.

The Nazis did not want to allow survivors. And so between December 1944 and April 1945, I was on death marches, transports in roofless coal trains and another Concentration Camp.

Struggling every day for four months, I survived till being liberated by the American forces in eastern Germany.

As I suspected no one in my family was alive in May 1945, the end of the Second World War.

Of the one thousand Jewish people in my hometown, only 28 were alive and I was the youngest, not yet fifteen years old.

In March of 1948 I came to Canada.”

Sadly, this day of Holocaust remembrance also coincides with the 20^th anniversary of the Genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia – one of many genocides brought on by hate.  Regardless of our differences, without distinction of any kind such as race, ethnicity, religion or other status, will we ever realize we are one?  What kind of world will future generations inherit if we don’t remember our shared past and take action to ensure a better future?

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 get ready for your next nonfiction chapter in life.  Start now by getting your next cup of coffee at a different café. Write me a note if you want to know more about how to go about becoming a writer “later in life.”  It’s an epic saga but still fun.

With English to Czech translation by Jana Gigov, TRITON publishing house brings to life on September 1, 2014 the WWII stories of my father and his Prague friends. Adventurers Against Their Will – published in my dad’s native tongue – is a dream come true! Unlike any other, these stories of forcibly displaced persons just before and during WWII remind us to be guardians of human rights and dignity.

From TRITON, please order the print version of the 2013 Global Ebook Award Winner for Best Biography for your Czech-speaking friends! http://www.tridistri.cz/dobrodruhyprotisvevuli

For the English version, go to www.joanieschirm.local/order-books/

Next, go get your coffee.

Remembrance + 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 31^st would have little to do with one another. And yet during my father’s life, and now in my own daily writing, they hold a key to a common cause for humanity.

Over the past six years as I’ve uncovered my father Oswald Holzer’s lost past within a treasure trove of his WWII letters, I’ve reconstructed aspects of the daily lives of Czech family and friends as they dealt with an unfolding Holocaust they did not foresee. These magnificent primary sources, written by seventy-eight people, tell of a storied Czech past suddenly engulfed with Nazi hate. They detail Nazi intolerance for those of different ethnic origins, religious or political beliefs, or physical and mental infirmities. The genocide that followed the hate included forty-four of my relatives. Among them were my paternal grandparents, Arnost and Olga Holzer, and great-grandmother Marie (nee Porges) Holzer.

So how does this story relate to Chinese New Year? What most people don’t know is that from 1938 to 1941, Shanghai, China became a haven for some 20,000 threatened European Jews who made their way to Shanghai’s free seaport to escape Nazi-persecution. In Shanghai in1939 when my dad arrived, there was no Chinese government. The Japanese had ousted the Nationalist government in 1937, so there was no authority at the seaport to exercise passport control or immigration. As a result, for a short period, anyone could land without having to show entry papers.

For my young Jewish father in this far away world, he emerged from the darkness of his Nazi-occupied Czech lands into this far east land of light, engaged in its own turmoil of Chinese versus Japanese soldiers fighting for control. When Dad arrived, he had no idea of the destruction that lay ahead back home for family and friends.

Trying to fit in, Dad embraced the Chinese culture, learned the language, and as a physician cared for their sick. In Peking (Beijing) in September 1940, he met and fell instantly in love with my American missionary mother, Ruth Alice Lequear. They quickly married and eventually found permanent refuge in Florida where they lived out their sixty year love affair. In recognition of the hope and inspiration it provides, my parents always celebrated Chinese New Year.

The UN resolution which established International Holocaust Remembrance Day urges every member nation to honor the memory of Holocaust victims. On January 27, I will read aloud the forty-four names of family members who perished. The personal register I will read from I call “Valdik’s List” as my dad typed it in 1993 when the movie Schindler’s List premiered. It was only then that my brother, sister, and I knew the extent of loss in our own family.

And soon after this important day of remembrance, I will turn my attention to how Chinese New Year, known as the spring festival, reminds us to cherish life through its colorful activities and hopes for the advent of spring.

Celebrating life should always be accompanied by remembrance of the people, places, and events that define our past. It is essential if we are to learn lessons from the past. Without this memory and continuity, we will have no sense of purpose to support our common cause for humanity to bring about a better, more peaceful, future for all.

Things 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 of how my parents lived their lives. I figured as a “good person,” happiness would just happen to me.  I didn’t realize that it was possible for happiness to be a choice.

In 1993, I drove from Orlando to visit my parents, Oswald and Ruth Alice Holzer, still residing in my childhood stomping grounds of Indialantic-By-The-Sea. By then I was forty-four and had grown curious about my heritage. The fan fair surrounding Steven Spielberg’s new film, Schindler’s List, made me think I could get my dad to speak more about his Czech parents. I knew his parents and grandmother perished in the Holocaust but had little information beyond that as my dad rarely spoke about them.

In the movie, the real life central character Oskar Schindler was an ethnic German born in what is now the Czech Republic. My father was also born in the Czech land just three years after Schindler. Schindler had worked as a German spy in Czechoslovakia and was arrested in 1938 for espionage. He was released under the terms of the Munich Agreement in 1939. My father served in the Czechoslovak Army at that same time. He was part of the soldier-team assigned to oversee the turnover of the Sudetenland to the Germans, also dictated by the Munich Agreement. The movie’s story followed that tumultuous period of Czech history.

I also knew from the previews that Schindler was a Nazi businessman during WWII who’d ended up saving 1200 of his Jewish workers during the Holocaust. I thought my father would find the movie interesting but realize now my idea to see the movie together was not a well thought-out idea. Had he gone with me, we would have watched onscreen gruesome scenes of concentration camps and vicious Nazis arbitrarily shooting people that looked just like my father’s close relatives.

Mercifully, my father gave me a resounding “no” to my movie invitation. But what happened next became a pivotal moment in my life.  In the quiet of their home overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, that night my father sat down with his old Voss typewriter. With me at his side, Dad typed out a list of the forty-four relatives he knew had perished in the Holocaust.  Never had my brother, sister, or I imagined the extent of our father’s loss.  As the names filled the page, suddenly these people existed for me – my flesh and blood relatives I’d never gotten to meet. When completed, I called his effort “Valdik’s List.”  This was the childhood Czech name that all these relatives had referred to him by.

It was one of the toughest moments of my life as I learned the truth from that period of his life. The memory is forever crystalized in my mind as my father, tears welling in his eyes, silently typed his list. It was also one of the most important moments in my life. I realized that my father made a choice. He chose not to burden his children with his pain until we were ready in life to accept it.  That night I was ready. The curtain rose on my desire to know what happened to all these people and put meaning to their lives.

I have learned many things over the past five years of family history research.  One is that the database development in support of doing genealogy research has exponentially improved.  www.geni.com is one of the bright spots. It has great software and collaborative efforts with both unrelated researchers and relatives around the world who wish to help complete the puzzle of life connections.  Rafi was one of those people who suddenly appeared on my Joan Holzer-Schirm home page as having “merged duplicate profiles for Ernestine Steiner and Lilly Steiner. Both were names that I recognized, along with Lilly’s sister Hana, from the massive WWII treasure trove of letters that my dad, Dr. Oswald Holzer, left behind to be found after his death. They are the cornerstone of my two books, the first: Adventurers Against Their Will.  I knew from translations that the women were relatives. I yearned to know the details of their lives. I learned they perished in the Holocaust but did not know any relatives of theirs survived.  Now I know that Rafi is like me: the living representation of the fact that the Nazis did not accomplish their evil final solution.

My dad, Oswald “Valdik” Holzer sitting with Hana Steiner circa 1938