| Description |
1 online resource (xxvi, 317 pages) |
| Contents |
Cover; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Epigraph; Contents; List of Illustrations; Introduction; My Flight; 1. Valdik's Story; 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-Café 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 |
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16. Love Breathes Life into the Heart17. 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; Index; About Joanie Holzer Schirm |
| Summary |
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 |
| Notes |
Includes index |
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Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on February 11, 2019) |
| Subject |
Holzer, Oswald A., 1911-2000.
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Holzer, Oswald A., 1911-2000
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Jews -- Czech Republic -- Benešov (Okres) -- Biography
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Jewish refugees -- China -- Shanghai -- Biography
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Jews, Czech -- China -- Shanghai -- Biography
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BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Historical.
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HISTORY -- Europe -- Western.
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Jewish refugees
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Jews
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Jews, Czech
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Benešov (Czech Republic : Okres) -- Biography
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China -- Shanghai
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Czech Republic -- Benešov (Okres)
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| Genre/Form |
Biographies
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Biographies.
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Biographies.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781640121737 |
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1640121730 |
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9781640121713 |
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1640121714 |
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