Joanie Holzer Schirm is an award-winning nonfiction author of a trilogy book series based on her Jewish Czech-American father's life during World War II read: Orlando Sentinel April 2019: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/tv/tv-guy/os-et-world...
Adventurers Against Their Will was awarded the the Global EBook of the year 2013 features a testimonial from former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. www.joanieschirm.com

My Dear Boy: A World War Story of Escape, Exile, and Revelation (Potomac Books use code 6AS19 for 40% discount) For sale anywhere books are sold. Hard cover print, audio, and Kindle eBook. (sign up www.joanieschirm.com for author alerts) Book of the Year Finalist, Foreword Review

GROWING BOLDER backstory re MY DEAR BOY: http://bit.ly/2XSfCJc

also - Adventurers Against Their Will – the 2013 Global EBook winner for Best Biography: English and Czech language versions... [http://www.joanieschirm.com]

For AATW Teacher Lesson Plans [http://www.joanieschirm.com/teachers]

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described the book as:

"A brilliant and compelling account of men and women caught in the turbulence of war. Part insightful history and part family drama...leads readers on a journey into the past." 

My Dear Boy -A World War II Stroy of Escape, Exile, and Revelation (Potomac Books, publication March 1, 2019) - sign on www.joanieschirm.com for alerts

Non-fiction book centers on stories uncovered in four hundred WWII letters of 78 writers to and from Oswald "Valdik" Holzer. Valdik was a young Jewish Czech physician who escaped the Nazi occupation of his homeland in 1939. For refuge, he traveled 8000 miles to China; in October 1940 in Peking (Beijing), Valdik married the love of his life, Ruth Alice Lequear, born in China of American missionaries. In 1952, they settled in Melbourne, Florida with their three children. Valdik and Ruth Alice died within two days of each other in 2000 at which time the letter collection was discovered. Joanie chose the letters as her inheritance. In 2008, she had the letters and accompanying documents translated and began a worldwide journey of discovery. With displaced persons exceeding 80 million (2020) from bigotry and violence, and attacks on democratic governments in America and across the world, Joanie shares stories with relevance for today's tumultuous world.

The Holzer Collection is said by experts to be one of the most extensive personal epistolary collections from WWII. The writer's voices personalize the human story of displaced persons, as well as people trapped behind in Bohemia. Filled with vivid details of life, love, and war unfolding in four continents, the letters offer up WWII history through the eyes of people involved in everyday life while trying to survive and learn what has happened to their loved ones.forty-four relatives perished in the Holocaust, including Valdik’s parents, likely in Sobibor death camp in May 1942.

Joanie's debut book, Adventurers Against Their Will focuses on seven of her father's 78 letter writers. Using modern sleuthing techniques, Joanie found two correspondents alive and descendants worldwide. She went to see them to deliver their 70-year-old letters. The stories personalize history and remind us of the importance to protect human dignity and rights.

See book trailer:[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpIlEP4pPy0]

Published in English 2013; 2014: Triton Books (Prague) Czech language: [http://www.joanieschirm.com] Seeking other foreign rights for publication German version Lesson Plan by the International Tracing Service: ITS: https://www.its-arolsen.org/de/forschung-und-bildung/bildung/unterr...

[]