My Dear Boy

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. As she worked through these materials documenting the life of her father, Oswald “Valdik” Holzer, she learned of her family history and 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 cast of diverse 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. This paperback edition of My Dear Boy includes questions for discussion.  

Joanie Holzer Schirm was the founding president of Geotechnical and Environmental Consultants, Inc., in Orlando, Florida. After selling her engineering business, 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.  

List of Illustrations Introduction: How Emptying Boxes Filled My Life My Flight, by Vladik Holzer 1. Vladik's Story: A Gifted Life 2. Bohemian Recollections: Pre-1914 3. A World at War: 1914 4. A House of Many Rooms: 1918 5. "Without Books, History is Silent": 1919-1929 6. Proud Czechs First: 1931-1937 7. As if Stopped Mid-Gesture–Cafe Manes: 1930s 8. In Service of a Doomed Country: 1937-1939 9. Compassionate Strangers: March 31-May 22, 1939 10. The Long Route to China: May 22-July 7, 1939 11. China Pulls Me In: July-September 1939 12. A World Apart: September-December 31, 1939 13. Snowdrifts, Machine Guns, and Prayers: January 1940 14. Learning to Love Peking and Its Forbidden City: February-April 1940 15. Outback of Nowhere–Pingting: May-July 1940 16. Love Breathes Life into the Heart: August-October 1940 17. Leaving China: October 1940-February 1941 18. From Freedom to Infamy: March-December 1941 19. A New Life in a New World: January 1942-May 1945 20. The Letter That Changed Everything: August 1945 21. Dealing with the Outcome: 1945-1952 Epilogue Acknowledgements Index