My Dear Boy

A World War II Story of Escape, Exile, and Revelation

Joanie Holzer Schirm (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

364 Seiten

2024
Potomac Books Inc (Verlag)
978-1-64012-629-9 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

After the death of Joanie Holzer Schirm’s parents in 2000, she found hundreds of letters, held together by rusted paperclips and stamped with censor marks, sent from Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, China, and South and North America, along with journals, vintage film, taped interviews, and photographs. In working through these various materials documenting the life of her father, Oswald “Valdik” Holzer, she learned of her family history through his remarkable experiences of exile and loss, resilience and hope.

In this posthumous memoir, Schirm elegantly re-creates her father’s youthful voice as he comes of age as a Jew in interwar Prague, escapes from a Nazi-held army unit, practices medicine in China’s war-ravaged interior, and settles in the United States to start a family. Introducing us to a diverse cast of characters ranging from the humorous to the menacing, Holzer’s life story is an inspirational account of survival during wartime, a cinematic epic spanning multiple continents, and ultimately a tale with a twist—a book that will move readers for generations to come.

Joanie Holzer Schirm was the founding president of Geotechnical and Environmental Consultants, Inc., in Orlando, Florida, which she directed for seventeen years. She is now a full-time writer, speaker, and curator of the Holzer Collection, her father’s World War II legacy. Schirm is the author of Adventurers Against Their Will: Extraordinary World War II Stories of Survival, Escape, and Connection—Unlike Any Others, winner of the Global Ebook Award for best biography.

Preface: Valdik’s Flight (Valdik Holzer: March 1939)
Introduction: How Emptying Boxes Filled My Life (Joanie Holzer Schirm, 2018)
Valdik’s Story
1. A Gifted Life
2. Bohemian Recollections
3. A World at War
4. A House of Many Rooms
5. “Without books, history is silent.”
6. Proud Czechs First
7. As if Stopped Mid-Gesture: Cafe Mánes
8. In Service of a Doomed Country
9. Compassionate Strangers
10. The Long Route to China
11. China Pulls Me In
12. A World Apart
13. Snowdrifts, Machine Guns, and Prayers
14. Learning to Love Peking and Its Forbidden City
15. Outback of Nowhere—Pingting
16. Love Breathes Life into the Heart
17. Leaving China
18. From Freedom to Infamy
19. A New Life in a New World
20. The Letter That Changed Everything
21. Dealing with the Outcome
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	17.07.2024
Zusatzinfo	9 photographs, 4 illustrations, index
Verlagsort	Dulles
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte
ISBN-10	1-64012-629-5 / 1640126295
ISBN-13	978-1-64012-629-9 / 9781640126299
Zustand	Neuware