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.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Two months after the liberation, divisions between people remain pronounced. People who had stolen from Prague’s Jewish community, or had otherwise benefited from the deportation of Jews, start to act out: “the innocent became a living reproach and a potential threat to the guilty” (52). Prague and Czechoslovakia remain a city and country divided as the Jews seek acceptance.
After the war, housing is scarce, which becomes a major issue. Heda states that there are “a number of empty apartments in Prague, abandoned by the Germans, beautifully decorated with furniture that had once belonged to Jews” (53). Most often, however, available apartments go to those who profited during the war. Butchers and grocers receive upgraded apartments before the homeless receive housing.
Heda receives an apartment after she demands housing from the chairman of the housing authority. She threatens to sleep in the office if an apartment cannot be found for her. She begins to unpack personal items like her nightgown, some bread, and her soap. After she eats her bread, she begins to undress, causing the chairman to blush and exit the room. Her plan works, and when the chairman re-enters the room, he tells Heda she has an apartment.
Heda and Rudolf, now married, move into the sunny apartment, which the couple fills with books. She and Rudolf read Marxist political material that promotes the working class and speaks to the dangers of corruption of power. These materials argue that capitalism “breeds racism,” and that “in a socialist society, all people are equal” (55). Soon, their home is full of political debate.
Heda is concerned about the shifting political climate in Prague. Looking back, she writes that human behavior was at its worst after the war and that people turned to communism in despair. Heda has faith in Rudolf, believing he is “utterly unselfish” and that his time in the concentration camps “affected him more deeply” (58) than anyone else she knows. Heda and Rudolf become more aligned with communist ideology. Rudolf brings home applications for the Communist Party, and Heda asserts that their “conditioning for the revolution had begun in the concentration camps” (59). She argues that living under fascists for so many years ensures that they have “contracted a trace of that dry rot unwittingly and unwillingly” (60).
Heda is surrounded by political conversations about the economy that she does not fully understand. She does believe, however, that her husband, and those like him, have good intentions: “Sometimes evil intentions produce good results and good intentions produce the exact opposite—everything depends on the context” (62). Heda remembers learning about world tragedies in school, years before her own experience. At the time, incidents of torture and the “persecution of innocent[s]” seemed possible only in the past.
Unlike Rudolf, Heda resists the ideology of communism. Because she is a woman, she is “much closer to reality and the basic things of life” (65). At the chapter’s end, she recalls the story of her grandmother’s capture. At 86 years old, she was taken to a concentration camp along with her children and grandchildren. Her neighbors did nothing to help her, simply suggesting to her that she not be afraid.
Chapter 8 Summary
Heda hesitates to sign the application for the Communist Party. She dislikes the party’s meetings, politics, and crowds. She wants to have a baby, to work, and to study; she wants to enjoy her life. She does like the term “comrade,” however, as it suggests a union of people that transcends language and country. She dislikes Stalin, but she is hopeful that communism in Czechoslovakia can bring positive change, and she eventually signs her application.
Heda soon finds out that many members of the Communist Party are not members of the working class, but rich and successful businessmen. Heda becomes increasingly distrustful of the party, believing that power and fear are forces for corruption. In a communist society, the loss of power does not mean “a step down the social ladder to a former position, but a fall far below it” (71).
Heda is haunted by her experiences during the war and by sad memories, but she receives a job with a publishing house as an art editor. Now she and Rudolf are both hard at work. Soon Heda is pregnant, and although she wants to enroll in school, her doctor tells her to avoid stress. When she gives birth to her son, it is “the most beautiful moment” of her life (73), and Heda has a vision of her mother and grandmother by her bedside. After her son’s arrival, she retreats into a private life, working at home and tending to her baby. In 1948, on an errand to her workplace, she witnesses a large demonstration. Her boss tells her, “Today, our democracy is dying” (74). She hears the voice of Klement Gottwald, the general secretary of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party, on the loudspeaker.
Chapter 9 Summary
Heda muses on springtime, which is a “time of remembrance” (75) for her. She recalls springtime in the village of Hut when her grandfather spent countless hours outdoors tending the garden. She remembers springtime in the Lodz Ghetto. Although nothing grew there, sometimes she would catch the smell of spring on the breeze. In Lodz, her father chose to do strenuous work in the fields outside the ghetto’s walls. She realizes, in retrospect, that he chose this job so that he could experience the season.
In the spring of 1948, less than a month after the communist coup, Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk dies. He was a popular leader who supported the Czech people even while in exile during the Nazi Occupation. The official report claims that he committed suicide by jumping out of a window, but few people accept this explanation. Instead, most believe he was murdered.
A few months later, Rudolf is offered the cabinet chief position in the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Heda is fearful for her country and for her husband’s life. When Rudolf turns down the job, his refusal is not accepted, and he is forced to choose between taking the position or leaving the Communist Party. Rudolf is convinced that he must take on this responsibility, and he tries to persuade Heda to think similarly. Heda is doubtful that meaningful and positive change will occur from communist influence: “How could we have been so credulous? So ignorant? It seems that once you decide to believe, your faith becomes more precious than truth, more real than reality” (80).
She and Rudolf move to a larger apartment, even though the former housekeeper warns Heda that the place is “jinxed.” Soon, Heda is tasked with entertaining other officials of the Communist Party. At these functions, the wives are left out of the conversation, and they suffer “the same agonies of boredom” (82). Heda is criticized, at times, for being too extravagant and for not upholding working-class ideals; at other times, she is not extravagant enough, thereby disrespecting the elite members of the Party. In the current political climate, there is no right way to act without being scrutinized. Gossip and boisterous proclamations of love for the Party are constants. Heda says that, “at the time, these things did not upset me very much. They made the atmosphere unpleasant, but it all seemed more ridiculous than ominous” (84). She sees little of Rudolf, who works late into the night; he no longer discusses confidential matters with her. They begin to argue, which is new. In 1949, the country begins to follow the Soviet Union’s model for communist governance. The country is now full of propaganda.
In the summer of 1949, Rudolf travels to London to forge a trade agreement. He is successful, and, upon his return, he is applauded by Gottwald. Heda and Rudolf decide to go on a short vacation to Bohemia, but they cannot relax. Heda says that “[t]he beauty of the landscape, calm and restful, only intensified the apprehension which, by that time, almost never left me” (90).
On vacation, they visit Heda’s old friend Martin. Martin takes Heda out on a canoe, and, in the middle of the lake, he tells her that Rudolf should leave his job and that no good can come of his role. Martin pleads with her, acknowledging Rudolph’s intelligence while claiming that Rudolf is ignorant of the Communist Party’s intentions. Heda doesn’t know who to believe.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
As her husband Rudolf’s career becomes more established, Heda continues to experience significant distress; throughout this time, she remains focused on the beauty of the natural world, but, for the first time, this beauty does not offer her relief. When she and Rudolf travel to the countryside on vacation, they pass underneath the crowns of tall trees. Rather than remark on their beauty, which she has done before in instances like this, she is “struck with such a sure sense of impending disaster... as though [she and Rudolf] were hurtling down the leafy tunnel straight into destruction, as though death itself was waiting at the end of that peaceful country road” (91). The sight of nature does not heal her; rather, the imagery of nature’s power and presence reminds her of her powerlessness, exacerbating her anxiety.
Much of the feeling of powerlessness in these chapters comes from Heda’s recognition of Ideology as a Means of Legitimating Power. The Russian communists have overthrown the Nazi occupation and liberated Czechoslovakia, and in the beginning, many people understandably therefore see communism as synonymous with freedom. Heda, meanwhile, quickly comes to understand that her ostensible liberators are her new oppressors. As propaganda begins to replace genuine news and debate, and as people begin to be arrested on phony charges, Heda sees that the promises of equality and freedom were always intended as a justification for the power of Party leaders. Looking back, she describes the turn to communism as a choice driven by despair at human nature:
I have often thought that many of our people turned to communism not so much in revolt against the existing political system, but out of sheer despair over human nature which showed itself at its very worst after the war. Since it is impossible for men to give up on mankind, they blame the social order in which they live; they condemn the human condition (53).
Whatever the reasons for this choice, its consequence is that Czech people are nearly as unfree as they were under the Nazi occupation. The image of the trees spreading their branches overhead and blocking the sky symbolizes this feeling of moving deeper into a trap, and it foreshadows the coming arrest and execution of Heda’s husband Rudolf.
Like many of her encounters with the natural world, Heda remembers this image long after the moment has passed. Unlike her other memories, however, which carry with them feelings of hope, however subtle they may be, this one is laced with fear. She writes: “To this day my heart sinks whenever I look up in a car and, instead of the sky, see a vault of branches which the trees fold over my head in a gesture of despair” (91).
In this way, something that has given Heda comfort before, throughout her time of imprisonment, has now changed. Heda’s love of the natural world is marred by the evils of human society, and the respite she once found in nature has now been usurped by the injury people have and continue to cause to one another. Heda recalls her father saying to her, “Now, in spring, my heart feels so heavy” (76). As Heda herself becomes a mother and her life becomes increasingly entwined with the Communist Party, Heda can relate to her father’s heaviness.
