EBOOK
About
In the tradition of Studs Terkel, Hitler, Stalin and I is an oral history of a renowned Czech author, Heda Margolius Kovály (1919–2010), 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. Her son and translator of the book, Ivan Margolius, adds critical contextual information surrounding the trial and its recently uncovered documents and film footage. 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.