Imatge de l'autor

Heda Margolius Kovaly (1919–2010)

Autor/a de Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968

8 obres 525 Membres 11 Ressenyes 1 preferits

Sobre l'autor

Heda Margolius Kovály was a Czech memoirist and translator. She was born Heda Bloch in Prague Czechoslovakia in 1919, where she lived with her family until 1941, when they were rounded up with the city's Jewish population and taken to the Lodz Ghetto in central Poland. She was separated from her mostra'n més parents when they were taken out of the ghetto and transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. She was chosen to survive and sent to work in the Christianstadt labor camp, but her parents were immediately gassed. When Soviet troops approached the camp, prisoners were evacuated and she managed to escape back to Prague. Between 1958 and 1989, she translated German, British and American fiction into Czech and would eventually become recognized as one of Czechoslovakia's leading literary translators, known for her interpretations of novels by Arnold Zweig, Heinrich Böll, William Golding, Muriel Spark, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, H. G. Wells and John Steinbeck. Her translations of Raymond Chandler inspired her to write a detective novel in Czech, "Nevina" ("Innocence"). When Soviet troops once again invaded Prague, Margolius Kovály fled to the United States, and she would eventually work as a reference librarian in the Harvard Law School Library at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An English translation of her memoir appeared as part of the book, The Victors and the Vanquished, and separately under the title I Do Not Want to Remember, in 1973. She re-published her memoir entitled Under a Cruel Star - A life in Prague 1941-1968. In 1985 she published her novel, Nevina (Innocence). The English translation was published by Soho Press in 2015. Margolius Kovály died in Prague, at the age of 91, after a long illness. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra'n menys

Obres de Heda Margolius Kovaly

Etiquetat

Coneixement comú

Nom oficial
Kovaly, Heda Bloch Margolius
Altres noms
Bloch, Heda (birth name)
Data de naixement
1919-09-15
Data de defunció
2010-12-05
Lloc d'enterrament
New Jewish Cemetery, Prague, Czech Republic
Gènere
female
Nacionalitat
Czech Republic
Lloc de naixement
Prague, Czechoslovakia
Lloc de defunció
Prague, Czech Republic
Llocs de residència
USA
Professions
writer
translator
librarian
memoirist
novelist
Holocaust survivor
Relacions
Margolius, Ivan (son)
Biografia breu
Heda Margolius Kovály was born Heda Bloch in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She married her childhood sweetheart, Rudolf Margolius. In 1941, after Nazi Germany invaded her homeland in World War II, she and her family were sent to the Łódź Ghetto in Poland. From the ghetto, they were deported to the death camp at Auschwitz. There her parents were murdered, and she was selected to work in the forced labor camp at Christianstadt. As the Red Army approached from the East in 1945, the prisoners were forced on a death march to Bergen-Belsen. Heda escaped and returned to Prague, where she was eventually reunited with her husband. In 1952, he was unjustly convicted of conspiracy during the notorious Slánský trial and executed. As the wife of an "enemy of the people," Heda lost her job and her apartment, and was then shunned for being unemployed and homeless. For as long as the Communist Party remained in power, she did not dare tell her son Ivan Margolius the truth about what had happened to his father. In 1955, she remarried to Pavel Kovály, a lecturer in philosophy. Under his surname, she became a well-known translator of works in German and English into the Czech language, including works by Arnold Zweig, Heinrich Böll, Raymond Chandler, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Muriel Spark, William Golding, John Steinbeck, and H.G. Wells. When the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia after the "Prague Spring" of 1968, the couple fled to the USA. She worked for years as a reference librarian at the Harvard University Law School. Her own memoir, Na vlastní kůži (English translation, Under A Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941–1968; originally known as The Victors and the Vanquished; in the UK first as I Do Not Want to Remember and in 1988 as Prague Farewell) was originally published in 1973. It has been republished several times and translated into many languages, including Chinese, Danish, Romanian, German, Dutch, Norwegian, and Japanese. She also wrote a detective novel called Nevina (Innocence, 1985). She and her second husband returned to Prague in 1996 to retire. She participated in the making of the documentary film A Trial in Prague, directed by Zuzana Justman.

Membres

Ressenyes

Hija de judíos acomodados, Heda Kovály vio como su mundo se venía abajo con la Ocupación alemana de Checoslovaquia. Fue deportada junto a su familia al gueto de Lodz en 1941 y luego a Auschwitz, donde sus padres fueron asesinados en 1944. Kovaly, sin embargo, logró escaparse un año más tarde, cuando la trasladaban junto a otros prisioneros al campo de Bergen-Belsen.
Tras permanecer oculta en Praga hasta el final de la guerra, en 1945 consiguió reunirse con su novio Rudolf Margolius, que también había sobrevivido a los campos, y con quien se casaría poco después. En 1952, Margolius era secretario de Estado de Comercio Exterior del gobierno comunista checoslovaco cuando, en una de las primeras purgas estalinistas, fue acusado junto a otros trece miembros del gobierno de alta traición. Once de ellos, incluido Margolius, fueron condenados a muerte. Tras su muerte, heda Kovály y su hijo fueron repudiados por el establishment y se vieron obligados a llevar una vida precaria durante años.… (més)
 
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Natt90 | Hi ha 5 ressenyes més | Dec 13, 2022 |
Great imagery and generation of ambiance/mood.
 
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IridescenceDeep | Hi ha 2 ressenyes més | Jun 28, 2020 |
Aquesta ressenya s'ha escrit per al programa Donatius de membres de LibraryThing.
A very enlightening history of life in war and under dictators. The cruelty of the Nazi philosophy that rewarded a select few at the expense of many whose only crime was an accident of birth, was clear. Then the author describes two different styles of communists. Before being in power, the local communists fought the Nazis and aided their compatriots. Actually admirable people helping their fellow citizens. But when the Russians defeat the Nazis the communists take power, only to continue the cruel and selfish ways of the Nazis. The difference is in justification of implantation of their laws. The book tells the story a very brave and intelligent women, surviving without compromising her principle's… (més)
 
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thosgpetri | Hi ha 1 ressenya més | Jan 20, 2018 |
Heda Margolius Kovály (1919–2010) was a renowned Czech writer and translator born to Jewish parents. Her best-selling memoir, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941–1968 has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her crime novel Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street—based on her own experiences living under Stalinist oppression—was named an NPR Best Book in 2015.

In the tradition of Studs Terkel, Hitler, Stalin and I is an oral history of a renowned Czech author, whose optimism and faith in people survived grueling experiences under authoritarian regimes. Based on interviews with award-winning filmmaker Helena Třeštíková, Kovály recounts her family history in Czechoslovakia, the deprivations of Łódź Ghetto, how she miraculously left Auschwitz, fled from a death march, failed to find sanctuary amongst former friends in Prague as a concentration camp escapee, and participated in the liberation of Prague. Later under Communist rule, she suffered extreme social isolation as a pariah after her first husband Rudolf Margolius was unjustly accused in the infamous Slánský Trial and executed for treason. Remarkably, Kovály, exiled in the United States after the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, only had love for her country and continued to believe in its people. She returned to Prague in 1996.

PRESS AND PRAISE
"Heda Margolius Kovály was a well-known writer and translator who survived the Auschwitz extermination camp and whose first husband, Rudolf Margolius, a deputy minister of foreign trade, was found guilty in the notorious Slánský show trials in what is one of the darkest chapters in Czechoslovak history. Kovály’s oral history should be required reading for anyone learning about the Holocaust and crimes committed by Czechoslovakia’s communist regime. It also offers a glimpse into Czechoslovakia’s First Republic. […] Her descriptions are unforgettable."
– Jan Velinger, Radio Prague


"Třeštíková’s interview and chilling newsreel footage of atrocities bring Margolius-Kovály’s story to life. Her combination of determination and luck renders her almost matter-of-factly told tale extraordinary. […] In Margolius-Kovály (who penned the 1997 memoir Under a Cruel Star: Life in Prague 1941–1968), she’s found a composed, eloquent yet spunky subject whose quietly upbeat nature is inspirational and infectious."
– Eddie Cockrell, Variety

https://doppelhouse.com/hitler-stalin-and-i/

MY BOOK REVIEW:

I recently received this eBook for review from DoppelHouse Press in exchange for an honest review.

This type of a historical book is probably the hardest for me to review. Reading about the depths of human deprivations just astounds me. Just when I think I've heard and read everything about how horrific the human race can be, I discover more things to feel shame and bafflement over regarding the treatment of Jews at the hands of Nazi Germans.

I requested this book because I strongly believe we must never forget what happened during the era of Hitler and Stalin. I'm just never fully prepared for what I might discover. EVERYONE should read this book.
"Nazism and Communism, the two totalitarian regimes that pass through Central Europe in the twentieth century, affected Heda's life directly with maximum intensity." Wrote Helena Trestikova, the terror alone that this woman survived can be called nothing short of a miracle.

This book clearly describes, in Heda's own words, the life she endured beginning with her youth in prewar Czechoslovakia, then during the Munich crisis. The horrors of the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Third Reich and followed by the transports of the Jewish people from Prague will wrap around your heart and squeeze tightly. Then, you'll learn the things that happened to her while surviving the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz, Chistiansladt and other camps.

Remain riveted to your chair as she goes into detail about her participating in the death march that led thousands to their demise, and where she found the courage to escape, hide and find refuge, when so many others tried and failed. Heda was right in the middle of the uprising that preceded the end of the war. You'll sing for joy at the reunion with her husband and the beginning of their lives together.

If that wasn't enough, your heart will break over the section of the rise of communism and how their lives became confined and limited under its rule followed by Rudolph's (her husband)'s sudden arrest, the lies surrounding the trial and his eventual execution. Later when proof of his innocence is brought forward, Heda will face a country in denial and receive no apologies for what happened to her innocent husband.

This is just a glimpse into what to expect from this non fiction book. You will feel the complete spectrum of emotions available to you, in this factual, hard-hitting interview of one of the few holocaust survivors. The writing is excellent, well-paced and sincere. There are black and white photos included that sometimes say more than any words could possibly attempt to. I highly recommend this book to everyone.
… (més)
 
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JLSlipak | Hi ha 1 ressenya més | Dec 7, 2017 |

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Estadístiques

Obres
8
Membres
525
Popularitat
#47,377
Valoració
4.1
Ressenyes
11
ISBN
24
Llengües
6
Preferit
1

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