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.   

The idea of a break-up began about seven years ago when I first retired and became a struggling writer.  Until then, as a small business CEO, I was convinced the benefits greatly outweighed what was required to nurture the thirty-three year association. Recently, however, I took a look at the whole situation. As I skimmed over the fine print of life, I saw it was any longer worth it. Clearly, they were receiving more than I.

The worst part was there were others involved. For the least disruption and to keep life nearly as it was before the break-up, those connections had to be introduced to another acquaintance before I could make the separation final.   You may have already guessed this was not your usual friendship.  It always felt kind of plastic.

That’s because I’m talking about a credit card – and not just any credit card – American Express Platinum Credit Card. Like no other card relationship, this one has been with me longer than my husband.  But, unlike my husband, after recent careful analysis of what I used from all the offerings, I realized I just couldn’t take advantage of most of what the card made available.

The Platinum Card relationship folks probably feel the same about me. After all, I’m no Danielle Steel or J. K. Rowling. Maybe someday I will be that stature of author. Perhaps American Express will make that possible by sponsoring my books worldwide.  We’d then travel together again.  But for now, I took a close look at our annual Platinum bill for both wife and husband card holders and it finally made me cry out: Yowza.

Beyond the emotional decision of leaving behind this plastic friend who’d seen me through thick and thin, the most agony was caused by having to redo automatic direct pay accounts on numerous web sites.  Most forms crashed a few times before accepting the change. Two hours after I began visiting countless sites, a painful breakup was over. My replacement friend was in place.

To mourn the loss of my longtime friend and to celebrate my new pal, I went to the mall. Even poor authors need new shoes.

Imagine meeting someone through their seventy year-old letters – not addressed to you but to your father- who by the time you read the letters had passed away.  Through the letter writer’s own intimate 1940’s words, you meet this person as a young man; a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague in Shanghai, China. You learn just a small slice of his life story and you yearn to know more.

Now imagine that this man becomes your friend, your confidante, sharing stories after seven decades. He speaks to you as if you are his peer because you, through the old letters your dad saved, know his friends as well as this letter writer did long ago, during the worst moments of his life. You learn this man nabbed the “most dangerous man in Europe” after WWII ended.

This surreal experience happened to me in 2010, when I found the man I knew as Pavel Kraus. Pavel, later in America known as “Paul”, was my dad’s cousin-by-marriage.  My dad’s Uncle Rudolf Winternitz’s sister was Paul’s mother. In 1944, Paul’s mother and father and Rudolf and wife Olga died in Auschwitz.  My father’s parents perished in 1942 at Sobibor death camp.  In 2010, I was on a journey of putting all these pieces of family history together when I found Paul.

My Czech-American dad, Oswald Holzer, hid four-hundred WWII-era letters away when the war ended.  They stayed hidden until he died.  After they were found, I had them translated and went in search of seven of the seventy-eight writers.   I located Paul in Chicago and we met at his apartment just after his 91^st birthday.

At that meeting, as Paul shared details of his life over the seventy years that passed since he wrote to my dad, Paul became my friend.  We sat on his couch, laughing and crying as we looked at old photos and documents.  There on a hot summer day, Paul and I talked as buddies from the old days. I discovered he had much to share, including some stories his adult children knew little about.  Soon after our meeting, when he captured my heart, Paul became a featured character in my book, Adventurers Against Their Will.

Paul Kraus led an extraordinary life – as a European Jewish refugee, later as a brave US Soldier, a high ranking executive in the bourbon industry, and a father of three children.  He also was simply a man who, against all odds, lived life to its fullest until almost the day he died at 95 years old – September 22, 2014.  The Chicago Sun-Times article summarizes much that defined this extraordinary life.  I will miss my friend, Paul Kraus.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries/30222106-418/paul-kraus-wwii-gi-who-nabbed-most-dangerous-man-in-europe-dies-at-95.html

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.

Today would have been my dad’s 102^nd birthday had he lived beyond January 3, 2000.  In honor of his birthday and the historic letter collection he hid away after WWII, I’ve cut and pasted below a translated version of his parents’ 1941 letter offering their only son a birthday wish. It was their last. In the spring of 1942, the Nazis transported them to their death, likely at Sobibor.

This letter, originally written in Czech by Arnošt and Olga Holzer, is part of the collection of letters which are at the heart of my series of non-fiction books that not only detail my father’s epic journey seeking safe harbor after the Nazis occupied his homeland but also share stories of his friends and relatives thrust in to the world as refugees or trapped behind by the Nazis.  Forty-four of the 400 letters were written by my grandparents.  I treasure their loving messages, especially this one on a day honoring my father’s life.

Arnost Holzer Praha XII-Slezska 127

To Dr. Osvald Holzer-Long Beach USA

Prague June 20, 1941

2020-1+2A 912/3=483/3 {TN: possibly a number, evaluation, and signature of a censor}

Dear Children,

Wednesday has passed, and the day that brings us mail passed along with it joylessly. We have not received anything. Therefore, we have to look forward to the next Wednesday when we will surely get something from you.

We also wish that this birthday wish reaches you on time, so we want to dedicate this letter to this event only.

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

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

We want you to be happy always in your family life with Ruth and satisfied in your profession, and we wish you that you reach the goal you set in your profession and that you succeed in every respect. We would certainly like to see you with a birthday present, but as you know, the circumstances are stronger than our best will and prevent us from doing so. However, we will keep all the gifts we bought for you here. We hope that the time comes when you are able to pick them up in person. God help that this is as soon as possible.

I know mom will want to start writing away, so this is it from me.

With warm greetings and a kiss for you and Ruth,

Your loving

Tata  {Dad}

My dear Valdi,

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

We heard that about 14 days ago, Dr. Eisner’s parents and Dr. Wiener’s mom had left for the U.S.A.

With kisses for you and your Chic,

Your loving Mom

©2008 From the collection of Joanie Holzer Schirm.  Reproduction only with permission from Joanie Schirm:   jschirm@cfl.rr.com