WWII
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International Day of Tolerance – Be Remembered for What YOU do Next
by Joanie Schirm on November 16, 2013 PermalinkToday is the International Day of Tolerance. Seventy four years ago at this very moment, my young Czech father was on the wrong side of desperate as he encountered the greatest intolerance the world has ever seen. Hitler and his henchmen were making their hate known toward a wide array of people they deemed “undesirables”:
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Honoring the Continuing March Toward World Peace
by Joanie Schirm on November 11, 2013 PermalinkNovember 11 – yesterday marked the 95th anniversary of the signing of the armistice ending World War I. You remember the much repeated phrase “The war to end all wars”? It originated from British author and social commentator H.G. Wells’ book titled “The War That Will End War.” Later, the words were used by U.S.
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Approaching this day in history: August 15, 1944: Allied armies invade Southern France
by Joanie Schirm on August 10, 2013 PermalinkFrom the historic Holzer World War II Letter Collection of 400 letters written to and from my dad by 78 Czech writers from 1939 – 1946: a letter from someone who found refuge in Southern France before war broke out. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005470 Letter from cousin Rudolf “Rudla” Fischer in 1939 after he, his wife Erna, and son
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A Birthday Wish from the Past for Valdik Holzer
by Joanie Schirm on July 23, 2013 PermalinkJuly 23, 2013 A BIRTHDAY WISH FROM THE PAST FOR VALDIK HOLZER Today would have been my dad’s 102nd 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
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Honoring UN World Refugee Day – June 20th – 74 years hence, my dad’s journey as a refugee
by Joanie Schirm on June 19, 2013 PermalinkDocks in Hong Kong, June 24, 1939 – L to R: unidentified aide to Frantisek Urbana, Leo Lilling (Valdik’s “distant cousin), and Oswald “Valdik” Holzer, a stateless Czech citizen on his way to China after escaping his Nazi-occupied homeland (then the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) According to the United Nations, every minute, 8 people
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Friends make the world go round…
by Joanie Schirm on March 13, 2013 PermalinkDerrick Salisbury on Facebook Derrick Salisbury shared a link Video of Adventurers Against Their…: “My mentor and former boss at the Orlando Area Sports Commission has written a just released book that documents her father’s fleeing World War II Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to Asia and eventually to the States. It’s a fascinating story that Joanie put