“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?

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

Inspiration for my fateful journey

When you’re an author of nonfiction, reader feedback inspires when you learn you’ve touched a personal chord within someone’s life.   Lately, a couple of heartwarming book reviews of Adventurers Against Their Will, remind me the day-in, day-out grueling research and study is well worth this fateful writing journey.

From Judith Lavitt in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada:

“I was born in Shanghai in 1941 to Jews that had managed to escape the horrors of Europe. My parents were one of the lucky ones in that they were able to leave when they did. They were on the last ship to get out by way of Genoa, Italy on the Conte Verde.  Pavel Kraus, a cousin of Joanie’s she includes in her book, was on this ship along with my parents (Abraham , Adi and Liselotte nee: Stein, Schaffer). Learning this fact alone made me want to continue learning more and more. This book gave me a better understanding of what my parents must have gone through in order to find a haven in Shanghai. As difficult as life was, they were much better off than the people who they left behind.   Shanghai was the only port in the entire word that would accept people without papers. These letters helped me to understand better what went on. After the war my parents as many others wanted the memories to fade so they never spoke about this time in their lives.

My grandparents along with aunts, uncle and cousins all felt that they would be safe staying in Germany. They had lived in Germany for a few hundred years and felt they were Jewish, but German first. They were a well-established family.  Could these horrors be true? Only my parents and one brother survived.

We left Shanghai and arrived in San Francisco on July 22. My brother Bert was born as an American on the 23. At that time no two people in our family had been born in the same country. We left by train for Winnipeg, when Bert was six weeks old.  Life has been good after such a bleak start.

I think this book should be a very important reading for the young. It could happen again.”

From Charles Ota Heller, Annapolis, Maryland, USA: 

“As a Holocaust Survivor–one of Czechoslovakia’s “hidden children” during World War II–I was intrigued when I found out about this book. What I discovered inside the covers of “Adventurers Against Their Will” was a series of remarkable stories. Author Joanie Holzer Schirm discovered an amazing gift left by her father: brightly-painted Chinese boxes which contained a treasure trove of letters. They are letters to and from her father’s friends and family–those who escaped Czechoslovakia from the Nazis and scattered around the world, as well as those who stayed behind and eventually perished at the hands of the Germans. It is one thing to be in possession of such correspondence and to have had the benefit of one’s father’s stories. It is another to write an interesting, coherent, dramatic, exciting story which keeps the reader turning pages.

Ms. Schirm does this beautifully. With so many individual tales, so many characters, and so many places, it would be easy for the reader to become confused. But, she uses skillfully a “Dramatis Personae” at the beginning of each chapter, along with a timeline at the end of the book, both of which allow the reader to remain engaged and informed. I know from personal experience how difficult it is, when writing such a book, to mix personal stories with historical events. The author does this masterfully, writing with emotion and feeling–informing, educating, and creating suspense. “Adventurers Against Their Will” is a must-read. It is for anyone who embraces inspirational stories of people who expect to lead ordinary, happy, lives, but end up having to overcome hardships and calamities thrust upon them by forces of evil.”

The photo is of my father’s 1939 ship ticket from Marseilles to Shanghai – his place of safe refuge until early 1941 when he made his way to America.   The high drama I write about in my books can’t be made up. These two book reviewers also lived early lives filled with life-threatening danger. Luckily, as with these two reviewers, the stories I write about end with rebuilt lives in a civilized society. May we remember civilized societies, as was Germany’s in the early 1930’s, are often fragile.  We must never forget the importance of honoring our differences and championing human rights.   

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.

Before my husband retired from ‘scheduled’ work in November 2012, he would arrive back home around 6:00 p.m. and find me still writing or researching.  Only when I’d hear his voice, “Honey, I’m home,” would I realize another day had slipped by.  And so it was for five solid years as I finished the first of two books  about my father’s incredible WWII life. I was on a research and discovery mission that involved 400 letters written by 78 writers – letters that contain the very essence of his family and friends, the fabric of a disintegrating Czech Jewish culture, and the hope for mankind thrown. This last part was largely because the Nazis did not achieve their goal of what we now call “the final solution”.  Because my father managed to escape in 1939 to China where he met and married my mom, I exist.  Forty of our relatives weren’t so lucky. My grandparents and forty-two others perished in the Holocaust.

As a writer, it is not easy to give yourself a job review or a grade for how you’ve done your work. Instinctively, you somehow know when it is time to let the words fly in public. But even then, you are fraught with questions of quality. For me, I worried most about the real people that I was writing about.  I kept thinking:  Did I tell a compelling story worthy of the real people who parts of the, hopefully, meaningful tale I am sharing?

For me, I wanted to bring purpose to their words. I knew these letter writing friend and relatives of my father deserved it. As I shared their intimate words describing lives unfolding under dramatic and often uncertain and horrific circumstances, I wanted my own interwoven analysis to be on point. I needed readers to understand the historic context which framed what these people were enduring.  After all, with our knowledge of history, we knew the end of their stories. Their choices and decisions were based on what they knew, not what we now know. I wanted to be fair and forgiving when appropriate.

And so, when Adventurers Against Their Will was published, I yearned for ways to know if I had been on the mark. What was my grade? The descendants of the letter writers mattered most.  My husband and my children approved – they let me know and that made me feel the many hours were all worthwhile. When reviews on Amazon, see below, showed the descendants approved of my writing, I was euphoric.

“…Even though I am mentioned in Joanie’s book, and my cousin’s journey–one of several–is so movingly told, I can (nearly) objectively state that Joanie’s writing style is stellar, the historical context woven throughout is fascinating, and the emotional wallop the stories pack is undeniable. A truly compelling read from a talented writer…”

“…We are indebted to Joanie Schirm, the dau

. Joanie Schirm brillantly weaves the story of her father, his family and his friends between excerpts of letters between them. These letters highlight their feelings not only about their personal situations and relationships, but also about the broader political events around them.
I had trouble putting it down.

ghter of Valdik Holzer (the focal `adventurer’), for sharing the
wonderfully rich letters of her father and his friends with us…We are moved and touched by the opportunities of escape seized or missed, and by the many photos of the protagonists and their families. A wonderful book. Thank you Joanie!”

“…. Joanie Schirm brilliantly weaves the story of her father, his family and his friends between excerpts of letters between them. These letters highlight their feelings not only about their personal situations and relationships, but also about the broader political events around them.I had trouble putting it down.”

And when the following note, see below, arrived from my niece, Beth Holzer May, I felt all was well with my writing world.

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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