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Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968 by Heda Margolius Kovaly, Franci Epstein

I don't like most "downer" books, except for holocaust stories. I don't like those either, but I've been brought up to believe that it's important to keep the fury fresh, so I read a lot of them.

This isn't really about the holocaust. It starts out that way, with the author (Margolius Kovaly, not Epstein) as a young girl dragged off to Auschwitz. This part is really discursive, and honestly, not that involved. It reads very much like the disconnected recollections of someone forty years past the event. In fact, this isn't really the important part of the book, but merely a way to start off the story of her life.

The interesting part is what happened in Czechoslovakia after the war. Prague was liberated by the Stalin-era Soviet army, and then established a satellite administration. Margolius's husband was a gifted and dedicated idealist, and advanced in this system to the position of deputy minister.

In the Warsaw Pact implementation of socialism, the higher a position a person held, the more exposed and likely they were to be the victim of persecution. As the state needed scapegoats, it would look to ministers, deputy ministers, and other ranking administrators.

Heda saw that this was likely, and sought to encourage her husband to resign. For various reasons (including a failed attempt) he did not, and was eventually arrested as part of the Rudolf Slansky trials. He was eventually convicted on the basis of a coerced confession and subsequently executed.

The bulk of the book deals with her collateral persecution as the result of her husband's trial. She not only lost the privileges brought by his deputy status, but was also tainted by the stigma of being associated with a traitor to the state. Those who did not vilify her husband were afraid to be labeled collaborators or conspirators by being seen to speak with her.

This memoir is a good reminder of how easy it is for a fascist or totalitarian state to abuse its power. While we'd like to believe the people would rise up to defend their freedom, there are a number of reasons they will not. In this case, the primary reason revolution did not begin at an individual level because prosecution and elimination was guaranteed the instant State Security discovered dissent. This was very likely, as neighbors would readily turn in neighbors both to secure any reward, and to avoid future punishment when the dissenter was found out.

Remember that the next time the Secret Service shows up at a high school in a tiny town in a small county in Eastern Washington.