Tea at Trianon: My Dear Boy: A World War II Story of Escape, Exile, and Revelation

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, January 21, 2024

My Dear Boy: A World War II Story of Escape, Exile, and Revelation

I recently read a memoir called My Dear Boy about a Jewish Czech patriot and how he had to escape from the Nazis to China where he practiced medicine and married an American missionary. There are more and more memoirs based upon family letters being published that shed more light of the ordeals of Jewish people under Hitler's tyranny. From Radio Prague International:

During the Second World War, millions of people lost their homes, family and friends, and were forced to start new lives elsewhere. The book Adventurers Against Their Will traces several such stories, based on wartime correspondence between a Czech Jewish physician who found refuge in China, and his friends and relatives scattered around the world. The award-winning book by Joanie Schirm has just come out in Czech.

When Nazi troops marched into Prague in the spring of 1939, Oswal Holzer was a recently graduated physician, serving in the Czechoslovak army. He was aware of the mortal danger Nazism posed for the Jewish people, and decided to leave.
In a few months, he found himself in mainland China. There he served as a doctor for several years before moving to the United States with his American wife whom he met in Beijing. After her parents’ deaths in 2000, Joanie Schirm came across 400 letters her father exchanged with friends, relatives and other people in the wartime years.
Joanie Schirm had the letters translated from Czech. Captivated by the stories revealed in the correspondence, she decided to share them with the world. After years of meticulous research that included getting in touch with some of the people writers and recipients of the letters, the book Adventures Against Their Will came out last year. This week, Joanie Schirm came to Prague to launch the Czech edition of the book. I sat down with Ms Schirm after a lecture she delivered at one of Prague’s high schools.
“I can’t think of anything more grand. I always knew from the beginning it needed to be published in his native land. One of the students came to me after [the lecture] and told me he hears a lot about the Holocaust but he doesn’t hear a lot about displaced people. So I feel this was a confirmation of what I thought.”
Although Joanie Schirm knew some facts about her father’s wartime life, she only learned about the details after she opened a red lacquer box with her father’s letters. She says she felt puzzled when she browsed through the yellow pages. (Read more.)

More HERE and HERE.