Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968

UNDER A CRUEL STAR: A LIFE IN PRAGUE, 1941-1968 is a first-person account by a victim of the two most notorious totalitarian systems of the 20th-Century -- Nazi Germany and Stalinist Communism. Clive James, in his book "Cultural Amnesia" (whose principal preoccupation is 20th-Century totalitarianism), says of UNDER A CRUEL STAR: "Given thirty seconds to recommend a single book that might start a serious young student on the hard road to understanding the political tragedies of the twentieth century, I would choose this one."Kovaly's maiden name was Bloch. She was transported from Prague to the Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland, in 1941. She spent most of the war in various concentration or work camps, including time in Auschwitz. In 1944, while part of a group of inmates being marched from Poland to Germany, she escaped and made her way back to Prague, where, aided by the Resistance, she hid in various spots until the Germans were ousted. She then learned that she was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust. Against long odds, her fiancee, Rudolf Margolius, also survived, and shortly after the War, they married.Rudolf succumbed to the siren song of communism/Marxism, and eventually he rose to high positions in the Czech Ministry of Foreign Trade. But he was arrested in 1952 and was one of 14 defendants in a show trial, the Slansky conspiracy trial. With ten others, he was executed (and his ashes were used for traction under the wheels of a police car on an icy road). His wife heard his confession, as delivered at the trial, broadcast over the radio while she herself was in critical condition in a hospital. In 1963, Rudolf Margolius was "rehabilitated" -- i.e., posthumously declared innocent. The end of Kovaly's memoir covers the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Soviet invasion of August 1968, ending the reform regime of Dubcek. At that time, Kovaly left Czechoslovakia for the West.Her book is a wrenching account of her double whammy: incarceration by the Nazis and then persecution (and murder of her husband) by the Communists. More of the book is devoted to the second story, and, strange to say, it seems almost as horrific as the first. Indeed, the account of her life after her husband was arrested is Kafka-esque; as she goes around Prague trying to get some sort of sensible explanation for what is happening to her and to her husband, she is a female Joseph K., thirty years later and oh so distressingly real. In addition to the historical account of the two gruesome systems -- and the courage, endurance, and luck that saved Kovaly from their successive maws -- UNDER A CRUEL STAR is noteworthy for Kovaly's analysis of communism and its attractions for so many similarly situated eastern Europeans of the post-War years, including Nazi concentration camp survivors like her husband.The negatives, which in the grand scheme of things are rather minor: At times, Kovaly's account is overly dramatic, or melodramatic (although given her experiences, that obviously is understandable); on a few occasions, her observations or speculations strike me as positively loopy, akin to resorting to astrology; and her frequent use of verbatim dialogue, most of which surely must have been imaginatively re-constructed, undermines slightly the overall credibility of her account, at least as reliable history. But these are cavils. UNDER A CRUEL STAR is one of the historical artifacts by which the 20th Century is likely to be known to the 22nd and 23rd Centuries, if civilization as we know it lasts that long.

I would consider this little book to be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what is happening in the US today.Things that happened in Prague and the Chech republic from 1949 to 1968 have parallels in the US. The echos are very strong.

In UNDER A CRUEL STAR, Heda Margolius Kovaly tells of her experiences in Czechoslovakia from 1941 through 1968. To simplify somewhat, the phases of these experiences are: 1) Heda, the only survivor in her family of the Nazi concentration camps, establishes a normal postwar life; 2) Heda, a young illustrator, wife, and mother, provides emotional support for her husband Rudolf, who is a hardworking idealist committed to socialism; 3) the communist government of Czechoslovakia forces Heda and her wee son to live as impoverished pariahs after Rudolf, who was the deputy minister of foreign trade, is executed following a show trial; 4) more than a decade after Rudolf's death, the government recants all charges against him, vindicating the loyal Heda, who never doubted her husband's innocence; and 5) Heda experiences the spirit of humane socialism--the vision of her murdered husband--in the brief Prague Spring.Since UaCS is a memoir, Heda's content is mostly the story of her personal and professional interactions. Much of this content is bleak, since only a few ordinary people--a nanny and a salt-of-the-earth neighbor--stand by Heda when times are bad. Instead, Heda's troubles seemed to bring out the worst in her friends and colleagues. After she escapes from Auschwitz, for example, most of her friends are cowardly and will not shield her from the Nazis. And after her husband is arrested, Heda copes with severe illness alone, her social network in collapse.UaCS is a successful memoir because Kovaly connects her own experiences to larger themes. These are life under an oppressive and incompetent government and the treachery that emerges as people maneuver within this political system for personal safety and material gain. At its best, this memoir is a dark and bottom-up view of life behind the Iron Curtain.At times, Kovaly writes with great insight, especially about the idealists who stayed with communism even as the system revealed itself to be ineffective, corrupt, and oppressive. I won't say this is the best memoir I've ever read. But it's good and tells the story of a woman who resisted totalitarianism with great courage, dignity, and decency.

Heda Margolius and her family was the victim of two of the most repugnant regimes in the 20th century – the Nazis and the communist Soviet Union. It is a story about her indomitable will to live, her fight for justice and a lifelong pain. This is a part of history of life behind the Iron curtain in the years after WWII that we have an obligation to learn about and keep alive. The reader will experience, one after the other, sadness, anger, a feeling of triumph and a longing for a happier ending.

Well written, personal and informative, would recommend

Excellent and well written book!

I spent a week in Prague recently and this book resonated deeply.

Come to know about this book after our first visit to Prague which sparks the interest to know more what it must have been like. Definitely recommended to all who would like to know more and absorb in what's Prague was like to the olde days.