49 pages • 1 hour read
Heda Margolius KovályUnder a Cruel Star: A Life In Prague, 1941-1968
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1973A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Freedom and Imprisonment as States of Mind
Even when Heda is imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp, in the worst conditions imaginable, she finds an imaginative freedom that grants her the courage to risk her life in pursuit of physical freedom. Starving and exhausted, she looks beyond the barbed wire to the distant horizon and sees a freedom that cannot be extinguished, reminding herself “that love and hope are infinitely more powerful than hate and fury, and that somewhere beyond the line of [the] horizon there was life indestructible, always triumphant” (5). After escaping Auschwitz, Heda finds that many of her former friends and neighbors—though physically free—are imprisoned by fear. Terrified of the consequences should they be caught helping an escapee, they turn their backs on her. For Heda, this painful experience is an early lesson about the nature of freedom and imprisonment. For her, true freedom is a state of mind, and it is therefore possible to be free even while in prison. Conversely, it is possible to be imprisoned even while physically free, and this is what happens to those who allow ideology and fear to supersede truth and compassion in their minds.
After World War II ends and Heda marries her husband Rudolf, their household is lively with political debate, but Heda soon learns that an inflexible political ideology can be its own kind of prison. Rudolf loves freedom as much as Heda does, and he believes the Communist Party when it promises to bring freedom to the working people of the world. Heda, who has learned through hard experience to be skeptical of such utopian promises, notices the contradictions around her much more quickly than Rudolf does. As Party leaders seek to root out dissent, the communist ideology becomes an intellectual prison, and intellectuals like Rudolf and Heda must watch their words carefully to avoid arousing suspicion. As the Party becomes increasingly repressive, the prison of fear resurfaces, and Heda comments, “The atmosphere in Prague was almost as bad as it had been during the war” (100). Rudolf continues to imagine that the Party’s revolutionary ideals will lead to freedom, but in the end, they lead only to his death. Heda spends the rest of her life attempting to document her husband’s innocence and ensure that he is remembered for his commitment to true freedom, demonstrating that her own intellectual and spiritual freedom has never been broken.
Finding Community Within Isolation
Throughout much of her life, Heda faces chronic and acute isolation as she deals with persecution first from the Nazis and then from the Czech Communist Party. This isolation is often emotionally painful, and yet she is often able to turn her solitude into a source of strength, and even in the most isolating conditions, she finds community with those who share her belief in the freedom of the human spirit.
At the start of the memoir, Heda is isolated in the concentration camps, physically removed from the outside world and emotionally isolated in her suffering. Though the living situation in the camps is crowded, Heda, like many other prisoners, still feels alone; she has been separated from her loved ones, persecuted for being Jewish, and threatened with the loss of her life. In this state of isolation, Heda manages to find a small community of women who are willing to risk their lives for the opportunity to live. Together, they escape, demonstrating that even in conditions designed to isolate, people can still find ways to work together and support each other.
After Heda escapes and returns to her home city, she is isolated in Prague. Friends and acquaintances turn away from the sight of her at their doors, too fearful to offer her shelter and support. Heda lives on the streets, desperate in her will to survive and deeply disappointed in the friends and neighbors who refuse to offer her any support. Just as Heda is on the verge of submitting to the emotional isolation imposed upon her by ending her own life, two friends, Marta and Ruda, offer her assistance, and she is saved. The courage of Marta and Ruda demonstrates the power of community: Even when almost everyone shuns Heda, there are still some who value their common humanity more than their personal safety.
After Heda’s husband Rudolf is arrested, Heda is isolated yet again, alone in her anxiety for over a year; most of her community shuns her as a result of Rudolf’s arrest, and her social isolation continues for years after his death. Ironically, Heda has long been skeptical of the Communist Party, and though she is proved right when her husband is falsely accused and hanged for a crime he did not commit, she is alone in her knowledge that she was right all along to doubt the intentions of communist leaders. The period after Rudolf’s death is one of the hardest in Heda’s life. The Party continues to punish her, forcing her from her apartment, and she struggles to find work. Even in this deeply isolating period, though, she finds a tiny but strong community in her family. Her son Ivan, still a child, does housework when she is ill, and an old friend, Pavel Kovály, soon arrives to help. The two fall in love, and Pavel sacrifices his job and his safety to marry her.
In all her moments of isolation, Heda experiences opportunities for reflection and introspection, and she develops a profound understanding of the changing world around her. She also develops an understanding of the powerful bonds that can be forged between people facing isolation and fear.
Ideology as a Means to Legitimate Power
Early in the life of the Czech Communist Party, Heda notes that the term “communist state” is a contradiction in terms, as the political philosophy of communism aspires to exist within societies without a state. These stateless societies are intended to be run by workers, but Heda notices that the most enthusiastic communists in her and Rudolf’s social circles are wealthy individuals, not members of the working class. This contradiction alarms Heda, as she notices the discrepancies between Communist Party rhetoric and the reality of their social group. While the Party claims to stand for the rights of workers, what it means for Heda in economic terms is that she must work harder for less, while Party leaders live in luxury, taking the spoils of the Czech economy for themselves. Heda quickly comes to believe that the Party’s egalitarian claims are intended only to legitimate the power of the Party itself. In this way, the Communist Party is not much different from the Nazi Party, which also used promises of a perfect, idealized future to justify its crimes in the present.
When Rudolf is arrested, Heda finds the accusations against him absurd, but the members of their community either believe that he is guilty or decide that it is safer to treat him as such. For most people living in this totalitarian state, it does not matter whether Rudolf did what the Party says he did. He has been accused, and therefore it is dangerous to be kind to him or to anyone associated with him. Heda’s treatment after Rudolf’s arrest reminds her of the treatment she faced after escaping from Auschwitz: People are angry with her as if she had done something wrong, when in truth it is simply that her presence threatens their safety. The Party has become so powerful that it alone determines what is true. At this point, it may be that many people see through the Party’s empty claims of egalitarianism, but no one is willing to say so.
At this time in Prague, propaganda is everywhere, and lies are treated as truth. Family members and friends begin to mistrust each other, and society begins to break down. Even when a new government is installed in Czechoslovakia, Heda struggles to elicit the truth about Rudolf’s innocence from the Party leaders she meets; they refuse to admit past wrongs by denying and evading the truth. Heda’s decision to smuggle documents that reveal communist truths demonstrates her integrity and her commitment to truth, and her lifelong persistence in seeking documentation of Rudolf’s innocence illuminates the profound importance of truth to Heda, both personally and politically.
