Ebook Download Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovaly
Find the trick to enhance the quality of life by reading this Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly This is a type of publication that you require currently. Besides, it can be your favorite book to review after having this book Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly Do you ask why? Well, Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly is a publication that has different unique with others. You might not need to understand who the author is, just how popular the job is. As smart word, never ever evaluate the words from who talks, however make the words as your inexpensive to your life.
Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovaly
Ebook Download Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovaly
Utilize the innovative technology that human develops today to find the book Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly quickly. Yet initially, we will ask you, how much do you love to review a book Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly Does it constantly until finish? Wherefore does that book check out? Well, if you really enjoy reading, try to read the Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly as one of your reading collection. If you only read guide based upon need at the time as well as unfinished, you should attempt to such as reading Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly initially.
This publication Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly is anticipated to be among the most effective vendor publication that will make you feel completely satisfied to acquire and also review it for completed. As known can usual, every book will certainly have certain things that will certainly make someone interested so much. Even it comes from the author, kind, material, and even the author. However, many individuals likewise take the book Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly based upon the style and title that make them astonished in. and here, this Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly is extremely recommended for you considering that it has interesting title and also theme to check out.
Are you truly a fan of this Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly If that's so, why don't you take this publication now? Be the first individual which like and lead this publication Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly, so you can obtain the reason as well as messages from this publication. Don't bother to be confused where to obtain it. As the other, we discuss the connect to visit as well as download the soft documents ebook Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly So, you might not bring the published publication Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly all over.
The presence of the on the internet book or soft data of the Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly will certainly reduce individuals to obtain the book. It will certainly also save even more time to just look the title or author or author to obtain till your book Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly is disclosed. Then, you can visit the web link download to check out that is offered by this internet site. So, this will be a very good time to start appreciating this book Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly to review. Constantly great time with book Under A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius Kovaly, constantly good time with cash to spend!
The story of a Czechoslovakian Jew, Heda Kovaly, who was sent to Auschwitz during World War II. She escaped the death camp and made her way back to Prague. But the horrors did not end with the war--her husband became a victim of the Stalinist purges.
- Sales Rank: #700851 in Books
- Published on: 1989-10-01
- Released on: 1989-10-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.75" h x 5.25" w x .50" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 192 pages
From Publishers Weekly
A Jew in Czechoslovakia under the Nazis, Kovaly spent the war years in the Lodz ghetto and several concentration camps, losing her family and barely surviving herself. Returning to Prague at the end of the war, she married an old friend, a bright, enthusiastic young Jewish economist named Rudolf Margolius, who saw the country's only hope for the future in the Communist Party. Thereafter, Rudolf became deputy minister for foreign trade. For a time, the Margoliuses lived like royalty, albeit reluctantly, but then, in a replay of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, Rudolf and others, mostly of Jewish background, were arrested and hung in the infamous Slansky Trial of 1952. Kovaly's memoir of these years that end with her emigration to the West after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 are a tragic story told with aplomb, humor and tenderness. The reader alternately laughs and cries as Kovaly describes her mother being sent to death by Dr. Mengele, Czech Communist Party leader Klement Gottwald drunk at a reception, the last sight of her husband, the feverish happiness of the Prague Spring. Highly recommended.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
An exceptionally intimate and poignant memoir by a Czechoslovakian exile. Kovaly, a Jew, was forcibly deported to a Nazi labor camp in the early days of German occupation. A spirited woman, she not only survived the camp but returned to Prague to wed her childhood sweetheart, Rudolf Margolius. Though their fortunes rose in the postwar era, Rudolf eventually lost his life in the Stalinist purges of the early Fifties, leaving Heda to face life as a nonperson. Kovaly's recollections of her life during the purges form the core of the book and convey with brutal clarity the magnitude of suffering inflicted on thousands of Czechs. Her brief impressions of the famous "Prague Spring" of 1968 are also illuminating. Recommended for libraries with large Eastern European collections. Joseph W. Constance, Jr., Georgia State Univ. Lib., Atlanta
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"Once in a while we read a book that puts the urgencies of our time andourselves in perspective, making us confront the darker realities ofhuman nature." Anthony Lewis, New York Times
"A story of human spirit at its most indomitable ... one of theoutstanding autobiographies of the century." San FranciscoChronicle-Examiner
"An extraordinary memoir...written with so much quiet respect for theminutiae of justice and truth that one does not know where and how tospecify Heda Kov�ly's splendidness as a human being ... It is impossible to read her book without the deepest admiration for her quiet, fiercedocumentation of the ordeal of the Czech people in our time." AlfredKazin
"Under A Cruel Star is the most remarkable book for a variety ofreasons: because Kov�ly has such a keen street sense for individualmotivations; because her writing is so precise and beautiful: and, mostof all, because she conveys such a ferocious and visceral sense that anindividual life is just as important - and just as powerful - asgovernments, militaries, and political might." E. J. Graff, BrandeisWomen's Studies Research Center, Columbia Journalism Review May / June2005
"Given thirty seconds to recommend a single book that might start aserious young student on the hard road to understanding the politicaltragedies of the twentieth century, I would choose this one ... All thisis recounted in an exemplary amalgam of psychological penetration andterse style ... A Google search reveals that the book is on the course inseveral colleges, but it deserves to be more famous than that." CliveJames, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts,W. W. Norton, New York 2007
"I used to teach it in what was for many years my favorite course, asurvey of essays and novels from Central and Eastern Europe thatincluded the writings of Milan Kundera, V�clav Havel, Ivo Andric', HedaKov�ly, Paul Goma, and others." Tony Judt, 'Captive Minds, Then andNow', The New York Review of Books
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Barely Surviving as an Enemy of the State
By Ethan Cooper
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.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A moving first hand account of life under the most difficult political regimes.
By Alcapitan
I can't say that I found this to be an enjoyable book, but that is due to the subject matter. Ms. Kovaly led a life full of twists and turns and heartbreak and trials. The Generation which lived in the Eastern European nations between the 40's to the mid-60's had to live through both Nazi occupation and then the rise of Communism in their countries. And, as you would expect, if you were Jewish it was infinitely worse.
Ms Kovaly tells of first of time in Nazi camps, her excape, the struggle to rebuild individual lives after the war, and then the turn by many to Communism as a reaction to what they had just been through with the Nazi's. All in all, a well written and poignant account of one person's life under these most horrifying of circumstances. Definitely recommended.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A Must Read
By Crosslands
Ms. Kovaly has written a very valuable autobiographical book. As a Jewish Czech coming of age in the 1940's she has had quite a life. She was Nazi concentration camp inmate, a refugee from the Nazis at the end of World War II, a resident of Prague, Czechoslovakia, and witness to the end of World War II and the rise of the Communist Party to power in that country. She was married to a Communist Party member who was also one of the top officials of the Czechoslovakian government and who was later purged and executed in the 1953 so called Slansky plot. And her autobiographical book is very well written with very intelligent and observant descriptions of both her thoughts and feelings and the milieu surrounding her. Ms. Kovaly describes the dependence and limited sense of the future of the Nazi concentration camp inmates, the struggles and the renewed sense of false hope of her friends and herself in postwar Prague, and the past catastrophes, false hopes, and ongoing pressures that led to the rise of communism in Czechoslovakia. Also written about is her life as an illustrator in the increasingly Stalinist country. She also describes the heart rendering problems she faced when her husband was executed.
The reader can only be very happy that Ms. Kovaly was able to survive and overcome her ordeals and be able to write about her life. It should also be mentioned that besides a wife and a mother Ms. Kovaly was an illustrator, translator, and librarian with a very intelligent interest in architecture and the fine arts.
This book is an excellent and invaluable historical description of post World War II and Stalinist Czechoslovakia. No student of European history student should miss this work. And for the general reader this book is a must read. The book is a very well written account of survival under very difficult circumstances.
Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovaly PDF
Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovaly EPub
Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovaly Doc
Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovaly iBooks
Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovaly rtf
Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovaly Mobipocket
Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, by Heda Margolius Kovaly Kindle
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar