From the historic Holzer World War II Letter Collection of 400 letters written to and from my dad by 78 Czech writers from 1939 – 1946: a letter from someone who found refuge in Southern France before war broke out.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005470

Letter from cousin Rudolf “Rudla” Fischer in 1939 after he, his wife Erna, and son Tom find refuge from Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia (Czech lands) in Néris les Bains, France. Rudla is writing cousin Oswald “Valdik” Holzer (my dad) in Shanghai, China after he arrived in July 1939 from Prague:

Actual address:

Villa de Cytises, Parc des Rivalles,

Néris les Bains, Dep. Allier, France

Néris les Bains

November 4, 1939

Dear Valdo,

After a nearly 2 month long stay here in Néris les Bains, I have obtained your address from your parents {Arnost and Olga Holzer in Prague} and am writing you immediately. I am not writing in Czech because I infer that with the present censorship {Japanese, Nazi sympathizers in China} no one will be able to understand it and this could be the basis that you would never receive this letter.  I don’t know if you have received the recent news from your parents that we left Prague on August 19, we were in Italy until September 10, and since September 13 we are here.

Although in my departure from Prague my goodbye with your parents was brief, I wanted to be careful not to take your address with me and with the poor postal service I just now obtained a letter from your parents dated September 26.   I should tell you that your parents had their carpets and jewelry returned to them, which pleased them a great deal.  I believe that they live quite well there although there are various restrictions but it is not as bad as anticipated.

We live here in a small town 250 km south of Paris also well situated. Of course I cannot work here and must wait to see how the whole situation develops.  If we have the opportunity to go to America, we will do it. But our quota will be met at the earliest next March and who knows what will happen between now and then.  How are you?  Are you working?  Have you gotten used to the climate and the circumstances there?  Please write soon and in detail because I would like to stay in touch with you.  Unfortunately, I cannot send you a reply coupon because you cannot get them here.  Please send me back the cancelled stamps.

If you need something and if it were possible to supply it from here, so write it to me.

With heartfelt greetings and kisses,

Rudla

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