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

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Kovaly writes with precision and a welcome lack of sentimentality about the attractions for East-Central Europeans to communism after the war, especially for Jews who had survived fascism. In the first half of this memoir, she avoids the overly and sadly familiar vignettes of camp inmates to instead explore in detail the unfamiliar story of what happens to an escapee from the death camp who wanders back to Prague, while the Nazis still rule the city.

Her scenes of homelessness and fear, as her former friends often become terrified at seeing her alive and sheltering her from the Germans, reveal a fresh persective on a refugee who ironically seems to be more endangered outside Auschwitz than if she had stayed within the lager. After the war, she shows how the Jews returning to their homes found their possessions and livelihoods stolen, and how many of their fellow Czechs had brazenly or surreptitiously commandeered the houses and the property for themselves, since the Jews could do little to regain these items.

Kovaly then explains how the appeal to a more just system, rather than the beleaguered democracy that tried to revive postwar Czechoslovakia, began to fool idealistic Czechs into supporting a communism based more on the lies of those who dared not tell the truth of Stalinism, as well as those who genuinely sought--as her first husband Rudolf Margolius--to bring about a better world through Marxism on more of a Titoist model.

Many pages that follow could serve as a primer for exposing how communist dreams began to replace harsh reality for many Czechs. In incisive prose, with well-chosen metaphors and vignettes, she excels in comparing her own search to that of her husband and his fellow believers. This gradual conversion, she finds, could not be based on the facts, since these were hidden from the "masses," but doomed the Czechs to repeat the failures of Soviets, who pretended that no prejudice or nationalism tarnished the record of their CCCP--an inspiration for Czechs weakened by the Nazis, the camps, and only two decades of fragile post-WWI uneasy peace under an attempt at humane democracy. Their self-confidence beaten down, they were ripe for the idealism and self-sacrifice that communism promised.

Also, she notes, the servile, the opportunists, and the conniving rose quickly in a system that rewarded the disciple, often an incompetent member of the "proletariat" over qualified managers and leaders. She shows in the next quarter of the book how her husband was forced to become a foreign minister, and how quickly the climate shifted and led to his show (Slansky) trial and execution. Then, the pace shifts for the last section into a quick leap forward to 1968, and evocative descriptions of the "Prague Spring" and her eventual flight to the West at last.

Readers who select Ivan Klima's novels of Czech life before and after communist dictatorship, Sandor Marai's "Memoir of Hungary, 1944-48," or Gyorgy Faludy's account of prison in Stalin-era Hungary "My Happy Days in Hell" will appreciate this memoir.

P.S. It appears in earlier translation as part of "The Victors and the Vanquished" or "I Do Not Want to Remember" in 1973 versions. I cannot determine if "Prague Farewell" is another title for this work, or another volume of Kovaly's recollections.

This book should be required reading for all students of the 20th century. I am continually struck by the amazing life Kovaly lived and the great skill with which she writes about it. The only weakness of this book is that it occaisionally goes out of print, which is a crime. It is an unrecognized classic and should rank alongside Primo Levi and Anne Frank as the most telling memoirs of the war and its aftermath.

My mother's book, in print since 1973 under various titles, the last being 'Under A Cruel Star', inspired me to write my own side of the story about my lost father, JUDr Rudolf Margolius. Now published and called 'Reflections of Prague: Journeys through the 20th century' it fills gaps in my mother's book provided by further research and historical information, some of which was not available to her and which many readers of her book had asked us for over the years. Hopefully this companion volume provides answers to these questions. I hope you find this book interesting and would welcome your feedback.

As the translator from the Czech and the editor of the Plunkett Lake Press version of this book, I'd like to address the confusion about editions. Heda Kovaly first wrote this book in Czech. It was translated first by Czech philosopher Erazim Kohak who published it together with his own writing in one volume. In 1985, Heda Kovaly and I together translated and produced a new edition of her memoir. We called it Under A Cruel Star. That version was subsequently published by Penguin and then Holmes & Meier. There are also British, French, German, Dutch and Japanese translations that have been published under different titles. All have used the Plunkett Lake text.

Heda Kovaly, an extraordinary woman and memoirist, died in December of 2010. Her obituary was published in the New York Times, Washington Post, London Times and other national newspapers. Under A Cruel Star has a complicated publishing history. Heda wrote her original text in Czech and in 1973, it was published in English translation by Erazim Kohak, a philosophy professor whose native language was not English. That book came into my hands when I was an affiliate of Harvard University's Center for European Studies and Heda worked at the Harvard Law SchooI LIbrary. I was a Prague-born American journalist who had written Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors and was interested in what had happened to Holocaust survivors who had remained in Czechoslovakia under Stalinism. I persuaded Heda to work with me on a retranslation of Under A Cruel Star. The first paper publisher was Plunkett Lake Press, then Penguin, then Holmes& Meier -- the current American paperback publisher. The UK retitled the book Prague Farewell, adding to the confusion. The PLP translation has also been used for the French, Dutch, German and Japanese editions, each of which have different titles. Intrigued by Heda's family history, I subsequently wrote a social history of Czech and Central European Jewish women Where She Came From : A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History that contextualizes Heda's secular background. The AmericanUnder A Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968 and UK Kindle versions of the book came out in 2010. The French Kindle version is available in North America as Le premier printemps de Prague (French Edition)

....but Under a Cruel Star is an excellent book. As a history major, I have to slosh through a lot of stuff that's not necessarily interesting or engaging, so Kovaly's book was a breath of fresh air. It was eminently readable and fascinating -- I had two weeks to read it and finished it within the space of a few hours because I just couldn't bring myself to put it down. She does a good job in her memoir of showing us what life in Prague was like after the Germans came and were followed by the Stalinists (I cannot say Communists, because Communists they were not). Her tale is gripping, speaking of the dearest hope of a people with no hope left, only to be betrayed by those who offered them the very hope that sustained them. An excellent read.

This is the best book I have read on the experience of the wartime generation in Central Europe. The author escapes from Auschewitz and marries Rudolf Margolius, a fellow Holocaust survivor, after the war. Like many disillusioned Czechs, they join the Communist Party in the hope of creating a future where such horrors could never happen again. Rudolf becomes a high-ranking technocrat in the government, and for a brief time the family lives in reasonable comfort. Tragically, they learn the Party is just setting them up for persecution, poverty, hardship and, for Heda and her son, eventual exile. They are the lucky ones.

Reading this book should rid you of any illusions you have about the Communists and help you to understand the Orwellian world of the 1950s Soviet Bloc.

I had to read 'Under a Cruel Star' for a history class I'm taking, and I wasn't pleased about it at all. However, once I read the first page of this narrative account of a Jewish Woman's experience in Prague during and after WWII I was mesmerized, I didn't put the book down until I finished 3 hours later.

This is a fantastic book both for people wanting to learn something about the surviving the Holocaust and re-building life afterwards, and for someone who wants to become emotionally invested in a strong, interesting character.

The story tells of Heda's experiences from the year 1941, when she was taken from her home and sent to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto and later to Auschwitz, to the year 1968 when Russia invades Czechoslovakia. In between Heda escapes from Nazi persecution, arrives back home to Prague to friends less than friendly, helps liberate Prague from Germany, marries, raises a child, experiences 1984-like governmental opression, is fired from job after job for having the name Margolius, and in the end survives to tell her tale.

The is a great novel that I would higly recomend to anyone interested in the Holocaust, Communism society, or just wants a good story of a woman faced with hardship who manages to survive.

I think anyone who is interested to learn more about Communism in general should read this book. I think the author did a good job in analyzing the situation and providing insightful information on life under the communists. She gave a vivid account on how her husband, who held one a high position in the government was convicted and executed. Her life was practically ruined when people learned or led to believe that her husband was a traitor. She was denied of proper medical care, was fired at every job, was relocated to a shack and how everyone who assosiated themselves with her would lose their job.

What I like about this book is that we get to know how it was like for civilians and for people who were related to government officials, live. It was fearful, dark, full of betrayal and worst of all, selfishness. Even though people who carried out orders knew that it was not justified, they did nothing about it. Her husband, under illegal interogations and was led to believe that if he agreed to confess to those charges, the author and her child would be safe. In fact, it was far from it.

This book is a combination of both history and personal account which I find very interesting. Mrs Heda Margolius Kovaly bringing her readers from the time she was held in concentration camp to period when she returned to Prague and how communism took over the country. Another book I would recommend is Nien Cheng's "Life and Death in Shanghai" which gave an account of life in prison, under constant interogation.

One of the most moving cronicles of a war-experience I ever read.
Written in an honest direct way which cannot help but shatter nerves.
Heda Kovaly survives the unimaginable. Never loses her sincerity and belief in people. She has an incredible insight in human nature. Her grief is overwhelming and one feels it with her every inch of the way.
But her moral strength is that of nearly inhuman proportion.
This book should be required reading for all highschool students around the world. Together with the "Diary of Anne Frank" it covers 30 years of European history, hands on.
I have read it over and over again and never fail to marvel at this physically tiny woman with the heart of a lion.