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.

Along my now nine-year writing journey, I’ve encountered many incidents that I believe entail a wink from the cosmos.  This short story involves a nod from the star character of my books-my dad-prodding me from the great beyond.  Let me know if you agree that this sounds like a cosmic wink or feel free to share stories of your cosmic wink tales at joanie@joanieschirm.com

Schwarzenberg Palace, Vienna brass door hanger

The end of 2007 was a reflective time for me. In a month’s time, I was to sell my ownership in the Orlando engineering company I founded seventeen years earlier. Finally, I would transition to a writer’s life. The anticipation was high. So was my anxiety level about this significant life change. To reduce my stress, I tried to concentrate on a string of daily activities.  I spent the entire New Year Eve morning on the dismantlement of Christmas decorations for their annual storage in a small, already crowded closet under a stairway.

That morning, my husband Roger’s related job was to pack the decorations in the closet as best he could among other household goods.  As he arranged one container box upon another in the bulging space, I heard my husband observe:

“You know you really need to store your mother and grandmother’s antique silver pieces in a better way.  Two sharp prongs from the old serving fork are sticking out the side of the bag. Be careful.”

It was apparent when I stored the silver away after a recent family dinner, I’d jammed too many pieces into one of my mom’s two old brown felt bags. Now the fork made known my secret haste. I felt a twinge of guilt to improve the situation, but more importantly, the great Florida outdoors was calling me. I needed to go for my daily exercise walk.

As I’d done each morning for the preceding year in preparation for writing my dad’s story, I grabbed one of my father’s audio tapes to accompany me on the stroll. The tapes were my attempt to recapture stories he’d told endlessly during my youth. I’d forgotten a lot of what was recorded in 1989 and was refreshing my memory to see what I might incorporate into my books.

My neighborhood hikes over old brick streets provided grand opportunities to experience a kind of time-travel back to the mystical places my father talked about.  As his voice transported me, I disappeared into another era, and met relatives whose DNA created my features and blood ran through me.  The tales let me live through his 1930s and 40s wartime escapades along with accounts from his 1950 and 60s medical practice in Melbourne, Florida where I grew up.

Depending on the tape I was listening to, I could be on a steam-puffing train with armed Japanese soldiers occupying China in 1940 or, the next moment, with a rocket scientist my father knew in the 1960’s, shaping the Nation’s emerging space program in Central Florida.  As the pain of the Holocaust kept my dad from telling me much about his parents, stories from his happy childhood gave me a welcome, magical glimpse of what my grandparents Arnošt and Olga were like.   I never tired of hearing my father’s Czech-accented voice as my feet walked in Orlando, but my heart traveled all over the world encountering adventure.

Over the previous months of periodic listening to these audio tapes, I tended to dwell on the history of my father’s early years in Bohemia or China.  That winter day I felt like hearing something different, so I purposely chose a more contemporary, upbeat storyline period from my old home town. By the title, my dad wrote on the tape, “Melbourne,” I thought it would contain interesting cases from his medical practice.

As I walked the first two blocks, I listened to stories of engaging patients. I got to meet the famous architect Henry Hornbostel who designed the campus that is now Carnegie Mellon University and several iconic New York City bridges. Due to some prior military service, my dad called him “Major” Hornbostel. He apparently wintered in Melbourne Beach where he chose my father as his doctor. Like with so many other patients, they developed a friendship. I also ‘met’ Larry Sheldrick, a retired engine and chassis engineer who was involved in the original design of Ford Motor Company’s Model A.  Sheldrick, Ford’s Chief Engineer become a vice president in Detroit with both Ford and General Motors companies. His daughter, Bonnie DeKalb, was one of my mom’s best friends.  Next, on the tape, my dad switched briefly to a story about the Space Age that dawned near our home and his physician role to Werner von Braun among others.

Suddenly my father changed subjects. With a switch to a somber tone, I heard my dad say:

“In 1963 we went back to Czechoslovakia for the first time after the war.   This was a trip of mixed emotions.  My family in Czechoslovakia had vanished during the war.   Only the Marik  family survived…”

From previous times I’d listened to his recordings, I’d gotten used to my father jumping around with his stories, offering them up in no chronological order.  But on that morning promenade I hadn’t expected to amble into this point in his life when he would finally return for a visit to his native land – now dangerously controlled by the Communist Party behind what was known as the “Iron Curtain.” My own mood instantly adjusted as my pace slowed on the uneven bricks beneath my feet.

My dad’s storyline continued in a bittersweet manner with information about the Marik family before and after Nazi occupation ended in 1945. I knew after the Nazis attempted to carry out their “final solution,” the Marik family was among the few remaining Czech relatives stemming from the patriarch Holzer line.  Aunt Valerie “Vala” Marik was my grandfather Arnošt’s sister.  Miraculously, all four Marik family members – Vala, husband Jaroslav, and sons Jiri and Pavel – survived. They became my dad’s link to his vanished family. He stayed close to Aunt Vala’s family throughout his life, visiting them nine more times after the 1963 trip.

He described how his mother Olga’s silver was buried in an orchard at the Marik’s homestead after the Nazis issued a 1941 proclamation to Czechs to turn over their valuables, such as precious gold and silver. To hide what they had, my grandparents gave their silver and jewelry to Vala and Jaroslav. Uncle Jaroslav made a map based on the tree locations in the orchard beside his sawmill in their Bohemian village of Neveklov.  Between two trees he buried the valuables alongside a fine bottle of brandy to open when the war ended.

Soon, the Nazi forces kicked out all the residents of Neveklov and occupied their home, using it as a garrison hospital. Legend has it that the Nazis used the area to practice for their invasion of Belgium. Soon after the Mariks were evicted from their home, Uncle Jaroslav, who wasn’t Jewish, and his oldest son Jiri (George) were sent to different forced labor camps in Germany.  After six years of occupation, when the war finally ended for the Czechs in May 1945, the family returned to their home.

The property had been severely trashed, and the orchard mostly cut down for firewood. The map had been rendered useless. Overtime, Jaroslav and his sons dug there and finally recovered the silver collection, but they never found the brandy.  As my father said later when telling the story, the brandy was never meant to be found as there could not be a celebration with the lost relatives.  At the end of this particular story, my father described how he smuggled the silver out when my parents left Prague by train for Vienna on their way home to America.

My dad followed on with descriptions of the communist government that had taken over in a 1948 coup and its impact on the Marik family and others he knew.  As my feet continued to drift along streets lined by large shady oaks tousled with Spanish moss, I listened to fascinating tales from 1963 about my father’s reunion with old friends and classmates from Charles University medical school. Twenty-five years had elapsed since they’d last been together as young adults before the Nazis arrived.

One of these friends was his Charles University professor of chemistry, Dr. Jan Sula. After WWII, Dr. Sula married Helen Krulis-Randa, one of the debutants of their medical school balls.  Before the war, Helen’s old noble family had a number of manor houses and castles in south central Bohemia.   Her grandfather was a member of one of the 1800’s governments of Emperor Franz Josef of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In each major province like Bohemia, there was a representative in the government of the Emperor known as a “Home Minister.”  Her father was one of these representatives and also President of a stainless steel cartel in Prague. When the Communists came to power after World War II, they picked him up and put him in jail in Prague. The poor man was a very severe diabetic, and of course, the diet he received in prison was not exactly a diabetic diet.  They refused to give him his insulin, and he died in the Communist jail.   The estates and manor house were nationalized by the Communists.  In 1963 when my father and mother arrived, Helen’s mother was living in small, cold water flat in the old part of Prague.

Since my father had known her before the war, Helen wanted my dad and mother to see her while they were in Prague so one afternoon they went for a visit.  The visit was a really painful experience for my father. She was of the generation of his parents, and he was once again reminded of all that had been lost.   This cultured old woman was living in a one-room apartment, a rather large room with a small kitchen and outside toilet, used by a half dozen people with similar apartments on the floor.

Helen’s mother had furnished her apartment with some of the most beautiful antiques that came from their old castles, somehow miraculously saved through the war.  There were three large wardrobes in this vast sprawling room which she used as room dividers to separate space.   In this manner, she had laid out a living room and bedroom.  She still had a collection of beautiful antique porcelain and gorgeous Renaissance paintings hanging on the dingy walls.

When my parents told Mrs. Krulis-Randa that they were going to Vienna after their visit to Prague, she asked my father whether he would take a letter to Vienna for her friend, Duke Schwarzenberg, still living at the Schwarzenberg Palace which originally had opened in 1725. As it happened, one wing of this grand old palace was made into a hotel, and my parents had previously reserved a room for their future stay in Vienna. They agreed to the mission of mercy. The day before they left Prague, Helen Sula delivered to my parent’s hotel the letter from her mother for the Duke Schwarzenberg.

After my father had described on the tape that he’d agreed to deliver the message, he went on to tell several other stories about their train trip from Prague to Vienna. I anxiously listened on, wanting to know if the letter made it to the Duke. At last, he described their arrival in Vienna at the Schwarzenberg Palace.

“I asked at the reception desk where I could see the Duke Schwarzenberg.  They looked at me kind of suspiciously.   Finally, someone said, “Why do you want to see the Duke?”  I said that I had a letter for him.   Arrangements were made for the following day to go to see the Duke.  I was informed that I should wear a dark suit when I went to see the Duke.  Ordinarily, I go around Europe in flannel slacks and sports jacket, but I always carry some better suits so we can go to the opera or something like that.  I got all dressed up, shined my shoes, and went for the appointment.

At the entrance to the palace, I was met by a footman in the proper uniform.   He led me upstairs to the second floor where I was met by the Duke’s secretary who was a middle aged gentleman in a dark cutaway suit.  He instructed me how to behave on my entrance to the Duke’s study.   I was supposed to enter and walk to the desk where he was sitting.  I should stand up behind the desk but not to say anything until the Duke addressed me.   I followed his instructions, but as soon as I entered the room, the Duke got up, walked toward me and shook my hand.  Then he took me to his desk and asked me to sit down.  I handed him the letter which he immediately opened and started to read.  He stared making all kinds of comments in German.  Then he turned to me and started talking in perfect Oxford English.  He asked me how things were in Prague, whether I met his cousin.  When I told him I got the letter through Mrs. Krulis-Randa, he said, “Well, how is the old girl?”  After a short conversation, he said, “I detect some accent in your English.  Do you speak German?”  I said “yes” and from then on we conversed in German.  I stayed there for about ten minutes.  Then we got up and he walked with me to the door and shook hands again.”     

Obviously recalling this exchange with great pleasure, my father closed with:

“And so that is how I ended my audience with the Duke Schwarzenberg.”

As often happened when I listened to the tapes, I walked home feeling as if I’d had a fine morning meeting with my late father.  Although some of our time together included sad aspects, most of it made me joyful for what life entails – extraordinary and ordinary happenings of life.

When I returned home, I decided to take some constructive action to store my Mother’s silver pieces in a more deserving manner.  I pulled the brown felt bags from the closet and laid them on the dining room table, carefully removing each silver piece.  I enjoyed thinking about how some of these were my Grandmother Olga’s secretly buried silver pieces. Somehow they went undiscovered by the rotten Nazi’s as they carried out shooting practice unknowingly standing atop them; a small piece of justice in a world mad with injustice.

It was customary for my Mother in the 1950s to carefully wrap her silver pieces with white tissue paper. It was believed then that the tissue would protect it from tarnishing. Upon my inheritance of this share of family heirlooms, I couldn’t bring myself to dispose of the tissues my mother chose to protect them. So the paper remained in place.  Within the two felt bags were various items I’d never used – like old silver cigarette lighters and small sugar plates. It had been a long time since I polished anything in the bags. I decided it was time to remove all the belongings and reverse their tarnished condition.

As I laid them on our dining room table, I came across something I hadn’t noticed before. In a thicker-then-usual piece of white paper was something brass, not silver.  As I removed it, I held what appeared to be an old doorknocker.   On the front top half, carved in great detail, was a man riding a horse. The horse and his rider were perched atop an emblem of sorts which had the number “8” engraved on it.  Holding it in my hands rubbing its beautiful brass, I found myself smirking. Apparently, at some time in his extensive world travels, my father must have “lifted” this doorknocker.  It seemed uncharacteristic for him and definitely was not my mother’s style. Staring at the doorknocker for a long minute, I wondered how the item made it into the silver collection.

And then it happened. I turned the doorknocker around to look at its backside and there, etched in the brass in black letters was:

Hotel Palais

Schwarzenberg

I loudly gasped, and my body shook.

Sitting nearby, my husband asked what happened.  I described the story I’d just listened to on tape and what I now held in my trembling hands.

Roger smiled as he calmly replied. “That is clearly your father telling you that you need to get busy writing his stories.”  

{Wish granted: 2013 – Adventurers Against Their Will published and won the 2013 Global Ebook Award for Best Biography; 2017 finished manuscript for My Dear Boy (not yet published); two more related books underway in my writing room}

Ruth Alice Lequear in 1946 – Joanie Holzer Schirm’s Mom

Each New Year for me is a little bittersweet.  I always yearn for great optimism and hope for the coming year, but a piece of that feeling fell away when seventeen years ago I lost my mother – Ruth Alice Lequear, known affectionately by many as “Chick” or to her grandchildren as “Chickie.” It was on this day, January 1, at the turn of the millennia, she slipped away to the other side following a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease.  I miss her each day while she’s over there and I’m over here.  I’ve yet to meet someone who in my eyes can match her sweet, gentle spirit and magnanimity that came from her beautiful soul.

I feel her nearness every day and believe her soaring soul from that other world still makes her a mother in spirit. For that, I’m forever appreciative— and hopeful —just as my Mom encouraged me to greet every New Year.  Happy New Year to all.

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.

“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.   

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.

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.