Summary Of Under A Cruel Star

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COMMUNIST REGIME: WHY DIDN’T CZECHOSLOVAKIA RESIST? Heda Margolius Kovály’s memoir, “Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968” recounts her experience of the Holocaust and the Communist Regime in Czechoslovakia, during the 20th century. In 1945, after the holocaust and after World War II, Czechoslovakia was in a period of distress, which made people seek for communism as a solution. Communism, a totalitarian regime, was a form of government in which nobody was allowed to own any private property and the government controlled all economic activity. This government structure was not only corrupt, but it also caused more economic crisis in Czechoslovakia. Despite the rough situation that Czechoslovakia was going through, none of its …show more content…

People who spoke against the structure of the government were imprisoned or executed. There was also the imprisonment of innocent people, that were accused to be committing treason against the Government. One of the innocent, executed victims was Heda Margolius Kovály’s former husband and Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade, Rudolph Margolius. Rudolph Margolius’ imprisonment directly affected Heda and her child, Ivan because they were living in rough conditions because the government intervened with her jobs and would try to make her move out of her home. Years after the trials, in 1963, the government released a document stating “that all the people who had been convicted at the trials were innocent” and that “their confessions had been extorted illegally” for the own benefit of the Communist Party (Margolius-Kovály 167). The conviction of those that were innocent added to the dissatisfaction of the people regarding the communist regime, which is how the movement of Prague Spring initiated. Prague Spring was a movement led by former Slovak leader, Alexander Dubček, in which he advocated for less censorship and more freedom in the Czechoslovakian Communist regime (Cole and Symes 764). Although the people of Czechoslovakia were deprived of their natural rights and were subjected to impoverished conditions prior to Prague Spring, they did not resist …show more content…

During the Communist Party, if people were to resist and speak up about any grievance that they had, they would be incarcerated and possibly executed. In her memoir, Kovály stated “By 1951, the atmosphere in Prague was almost as bad as it had been during the war. No one dared to speak out loud, and hardly a week passed without news of someone’s arrest” (101). This statement further explains how constantly were people arrested, and how people were so fearful that they were afraid to express themselves about anything publicly. In order to stay out of danger, “People no longer aspired toward things but away from them. All they wanted was to avoid trouble. They tried not to be seen anywhere, not to talk to anyone, not to attract any attention” (Margolius-Kovály 126). This statement also shows how people were living their lives at this point and how the inability to freely express themselves impaired the way that they interacted with others. The amount of fear that people had during the communist regime in Czechoslovakia discouraged them from resisting, especially since they could potentially be affected -- or in other words arrested and

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