Under a cruel star - Heda Kovly

Heda Margolius Kovly's memoir of the crisis of modern Czech history recounts the tragedies and terrors in the life of a young Jewish woman, beginning with the Nazi invasion and her deportation to Auschwitz. She eventually returned to Prague, where she took part in the May 1945 uprising.

The postwar years brought hardship and fears of a new kind under Stalinism. She poignantly recounts the arrest of her husband, his conviction in the infamous 1952 Slansky trial, and his execution. Kovly proceeds to fill in the colorless years that marked Czechoslovakia until 1968, ending on the bittersweet note that was the Prague Spring and her own self-exile. Not for sale in the United Kingdom.