As a non-fiction author, it’s particularly meaningful when you have a chance to connect live with readers who’ve had the experience to “meet” your real life characters. This opportunity recently happened for me when I got an email invitation to attend a long standing book club who’d read Adventurers Against Their Will.  I was in the midst of completing the manuscript for my second book, My Dear Boy, so we scheduled the meeting for two months hence.  That night arrived in March 2016. Here’s the email feedback I received following the evening.  It turns out it was as magical a night for me as it apparently was for them!

Dear Joanie,

…Words can’t even begin to express how special you made our book club gathering.  I know the rest of the ladies were as awed as I was that you brought your Dad’s pants that he was wearing when he escaped.  They bring such a reality to the discussion of your great book.  I get “chills” every time I think of all the “synchronicities” that happened and still happen as you bring “The Adventurers” stories to more and more people.

I have received so many emails from the Book Club ladies and believe me when I say they are still ecstatic about your presentation last evening.  Your genuineness in sharing and all the visuals you presented added an extra layer of understanding to the complexities and realities of “The Adventurers” lives.  The ladies will be talking about this for a long, long time.  As many of them have mentioned, this was the highlight of our 14 years together as a book club.  And, needless to say, we are all looking forward to the release of your next book.

And, I must tell you, I was flooded with many happy memories as I collected and made the recipes for the Czech dishes that I so enjoyed throughout my childhood.  Traditions are what connect us to our heritage.  How blessed we are that we can make this happen.

Thank you again for a very special evening for all of us.

Fondly, Fran

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.

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.

Docks in Hong Kong,  June 24, 1939 – L to R: unidentified aide to Frantisek Urbana, Leo Lilling (Valdik’s “distant cousin), and Oswald “Valdik” Holzer, a stateless Czech citizen on his way to China after escaping his Nazi-occupied homeland (then the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia)

According to the United Nations, every minute, 8 people leave everything behind to escape war, persecution or terror. According to the UN, at the end of 2011 throughout the world there were 42.5 million forcibly displaced people of which 12 million were stateless. Seven decades earlier, my father, Dr. Oswald “Valdik” Holzer, became a stateless and displaced person when the Nazis occupied his Czech homeland in March, 1939.  June 20, 2013 is World Refugee Day.

With his well-founded fear of persecution by the Nazis, my Jewish father said good-bye on May 21, 1939 to his parents, Arnost and Olga Holzer, at Prague’s Woodrow Wilson Train station. He was boarding a train for Paris on his way to Marseilles to catch a ship to China. One document of his Nazi-required emigration paperwork said he was going to work for the Bata Shoe Company in Singapore.  It wasn’t true. It was just necessary paperwork to go with his black market bought visa and boat ticket to China. The Bata document saved his life. Three years hence, in May 1942, his parents became victims of Sobibor Death Camp. Forty-two other relatives perished at other concentration camps.

When he departed Prague, he carried only a suitcase with a few important documents, clothing, camera, and medical equipment that he later used to practice medicine for the American Brethren in Ping Ting Hsien, Shanxi Province. In China, 1939-1941, Valdik was stateless. He did not have a recognized nationality and therefore belonged to no country. Czechoslovakia had ceased to exist. The Czech lands became the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.  When he left his chaotic homeland, he had no idea his journey in search of a final safe harbor would last six years and cover five continents.  His fate included falling madly in love in 1940 in Peking (Beijing) with a beautiful American missionary, Ruth Alice Lequear {later to become my mother}.

It was in America that my father rebuilt his life. On a peaceful island on the east coast of Florida he created a new home for my mom, brother, sister and I.  He became a proud and loyal American citizen, valuing the many freedoms that come, sometimes not easily, with our democracy. A family physician in Melbourne, Florida for over forty years, one year he delivered over 200 babies. He gave generously of his time, talents, and money to community services for the needy, disabled, and elderly. He donated ten years of his life as Campus Doc at Florida Institute of Technology. My father represents what is great about the many immigrants who have adopted our country as their own.

But he never forgot his native land nor the many friends and family who lost their lives during WWII. He supported relatives who survived the war but then were forced to live behind the Iron Curtain under Communism. After their homes and businesses were nationalized and their human rights taken away, they needed help. In the 1960s, our family temporarily housed a Cuban family that also was displaced by a communist regime which confiscated their property and threatened their well-being.

World Refugee Day – June 20, 2013 – reminds us all of how precarious life can be. With the turn of a page in history, whether from a persecution, war, terror, or the effects of natural or human-made disasters – things can change drastically in a minute.

Take time on June 20^th to remember how important it is to help those less fortunate than you – people just like you who suddenly become refugees against their will.

Joanie Holzer Schirm is an Orlando, Florida author of the recently published Adventurers Against Their Will. Described by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as “a brilliant and compelling account of men and women caught in the turbulence of war…” Adventurers is based on revelations from a secret treasure trove of 400 WWII letters by 78 Czech writers.  As a modern day sleuth, Schirm goes in search of 7 of the letter writers who turn out to be friends and cousins who wrote to her father as displaced people from within the Czech lands during the occupation or from places where they escaped to like Great Britain, France, South America, China and America.  www.joanieschirm.local

Orlando Author Joanie Schirm of Adventurers Against Their Will is feature interviewee

When my family moved some twenty years ago to the charming Orlando downtown neighborhood nicknamed “College Park”, for the first time in my adult life, I felt really at home. Since I’d left home at 17 for college, I’d always lived in what felt like the busiest parts of cities like Miami and Atlanta where there was for me no sense of place. For ten years before moving to downtown, I’d lived in a suburban neighborhood. When we decided to move downtown nearer our jobs, we gave our real estate agent/good friend Joan Matthews one request: get us on water. Joan did it!

In College Park we moved on to a lot overlooking luscious Lake Concord facing the luminous sky line of Orlando. Since I grew up in the 1950/60s overlooking the water of the Indian River, which faced the about-to-happen skyline of Melbourne, Florida, I felt a sense of calm that comes only for me with a water view.

So it was great pleasure twenty years hence when the well-read College Park Community Paper decided to make me their third choice in a new series titled: The CP Interview.  The first two interviews were with gentlemen I hold in high regard – Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who lives in the hood and is a good hearted, visionary leader…and Jimmy Hewitt, the man whose strong positive spirit was instrumental in Orlando being able to host an NBA franchise – The Orlando Magic.  They are a tough act to follow but Publisher Debbie Goetz did a fine job in bringing my story forward.  Czech it out: Orlando College Park interview with Joanie Schirm April 2013

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando,_Florida