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Heda Margolius Kovály

December 02, 2023

Heda Margolius Kovály (15 September 1919[1] – 5 December 2010[1]) was a Czech writer[2] and translator. She survived the Łódź ghetto and Auschwitz where her parents died. She later escaped whilst being marched to Bergen-Belsen to find that no one would take her in. Her husband was made a deputy minister in Czechoslovakia and he was then hanged as a traitor. As the wife of disgraced man she married again and she and her husband were treated badly. They left for the US in 1968 when the country was invaded by the Warsaw Pact countries. She published her biography in 1973. She and her husband did not return to her homeland until 1996.

Heda Margolius Kovály
Kovály in Prague, 1992
BornHeda Bloch
(1919-09-15)15 September 1919[1]
Prague, Czechoslovakia[1]
Died5 December 2010(2010-12-05) (aged 91)[1]
Prague, Czech Republic[1]
OccupationWriter and translator
GenreMemoirist

Early life edit

She was born Heda Bloch[1] to Jewish parents in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where she lived until 1941 when her family was rounded up along with first 5,000 of the city's Jewish population and taken to the Lodz Ghetto in central Poland.[1]

Concentration-camp and Margolius-marriage years edit

Married to her childhood sweetheart, Rudolf Margolius, she was separated from her parents when the Jews were taken out of the Łódź ghetto on arrival to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. After arriving at Auschwitz, she was chosen to survive—though her parents were immediately gassed[1]—and to work as a laborer in the Christianstadt labour camp.

When the Eastern Front of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union approached the camp, its prisoners were evacuated. With a few other women in the first months of 1945, it was decided while on this journey to Bergen-Belsen, to escape back to Prague. After arriving in the city, Margolius discovered that most of the people who remained in the city during the war were too frightened by the threat of German punishment to aid an escapee from the camps.

When Soviet forces finally freed Prague from Nazi control the Communist Party began to rise. The experiences of her husband at Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps had led him to become a communist. Having been asked, he took a job with the Communist government of Klement Gottwald as Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade,[3] despite his own and his wife's reservations about the position.

In 1952, her husband was found guilty of conspiracy[3] during the notorious Slánský trial. Rudolf was one of the eleven Jews on the list of fourteen accused. Having been prevented from seeing her husband for eleven months after his arrest, and after he and the other arrested Jews gave false confessions extracted by torture, Heda later learned that he had been hanged and his body cremated and given to security officials for disposal. In a final indignity, a few miles out of Prague, the officials' limousine began to skid on the icy road and his ashes were thrown under the wheels to create traction.[4] Related to 'a people's enemy' her life was made harder—"Heda was thrown out of her job and her apartment, and then additionally persecuted for being unemployed and homeless."[5]

Their son, Ivan Margolius, was raised in impoverished conditions. For as long as the Communist Party remained in power, she was kept from good jobs and socially shunned. She did not tell Ivan the truth about what happened to his father until he was sixteen years old.

The Trial aftermath edit

Heda protested against the Slánský trial to the Czechoslovak authorities and to the office of the Presidents of the Republic a number of times. In 1966 she smuggled out of Czechoslovakia to Pavel Tigrid in Paris the secret ruling of the Czechoslovak Supreme Court cancelling the trial and its indictments in totality, which Tigrid published as a supplement to his Svědectví magazine in 1967.[6]

Kovály-marriage years edit

She remarried in 1955 to Pavel Kovály (1928–2006). Unfortunately, his name was tarnished because of his association with her as the widow of the alleged traitor, her first husband, Rudolf Margolius.[7]

Emigration from Czechoslovakia to the United States edit

Finally in 1968, when once again Soviet Union troops invaded Prague after the Prague Spring and occupation seemed inevitable, Margolius Kovály fled Czechoslovakia to the United States.

She worked as a reference assistant librarian in the Harvard Law School Library at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Return to Prague edit

Margolius Kovály returned to Prague to retire with her second husband in 1996.

Writing edit

Her memoir was originally written in Czech and published in Canada under the title Na vlastní kůži by 68 Publishers in Toronto in 1973. An English translation appeared in the same year as the first part of the book The Victors and the Vanquished published by Horizon Press in New York. A British edition of the book excluded the second treatise and was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson under the title I Do Not Want To Remember in 1973.

In 1986, she re-published her memoir Under A Cruel Star – A Life in Prague 1941–1968 (published in the United Kingdom as Prague Farewell). The memoir is dedicated to her son and it has been widely translated and is available in French and English as an e-book. The memoir is also available in Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Romanian, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese, Persian.

In 1985 she published a novel called Nevina (Innocence) in Czech by Index, Köln and republished in the Czech Republic in 2013 by Mladá fronta, Praha. The English translation, by Alex Zucker, was published by Soho Press, New York in June 2015.[8] Professor Marci Shore said of the book: "Although it is crime fiction and designed to be fine reading there is a deeper philosophical point which is that there is no innocence ... To participate in the resistance is to take on the guilt of retaliation and to not participate is to take on the guilt of passivity."[9]

Between 1958 and 1989 she translated from German or English into the Czech language over 24 works of well-known authors such as Arnold Zweig, Raymond Chandler, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Arnold Bennett, Muriel Spark, William Golding, John Steinbeck, H. G. Wells and many others.[10]

In 2000 Kovály participated in the making of Zuzana Justman's film A Trial in Prague. In 2015 Mladá fronta, Praha, published Hitler, Stalin a já: Ústní historie 20. století by Heda Kovályová and Helena Třeštíková based on the full transcript of the 2001 TV film documentary Hitler, Stalin a já.

Death edit

Margolius Kovály died in Prague, age 91, after a long illness.[1] A memorial plaque dedicated to Heda Margolius Kovály together with her first husband Dr Rudolf Margolius is located on the family tomb at New Jewish Cemetery, Izraelská 1, Prague 3, sector no. 21, row no. 13, plot no. 33, directly behind Franz Kafka's grave.[11]

Bibliography edit

  • Kovály, Heda and Kohák, Erazim (1973). The Victors and the Vanquished. Horizon Press (New York). ISBN 0-8180-1603-5. (In Czech: Na vlastní kůži. 68 Publishers (Toronto). 1973)
  • Margolius, Heda (1973). I Do Not Want To Remember Auschwitz 1941 - Prague 1968. Weidenfeld and Nicolson (London). ISBN 0-297-76671-6.
  • Nováková, Helena (1985, pseudonym of Heda Margolius Kovály). Nevina. Index (Köln). In Czech.
  • Margolius Kovály, Heda (1986). Under A Cruel Star – A Life in Prague 1941–1968. Plunkett Lake Press (Cambridge, Massachusetts). ISBN 0-9614696-1-7.
  • Margolius Kovály, Heda (1997). Prague Farewell. Indigo (London). ISBN 0-575-40086-2. (Kindle edition on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk also available.)
  • Margolius Kovály, Heda (1997). Under A Cruel Star – A Life in Prague 1941–1968. Holmes & Meier (New York). ISBN 0-8419-1377-3. In Czech: Na vlastní kůži. Academia (Praha). 2003, 2012.
  • Margolius Kovály, Heda (2010). Under A Cruel Star – A Life in Prague 1941–1968. Plunkett Lake Press e-book (Kindle edition on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk)
  • Margolius Kovály, Heda (2012). Under A Cruel Star - A Life in Prague 1941-1968. Granta (London). ISBN 978-1-84708-476-7.
  • Kovályová, Heda (2013) Nevina aneb Vražda v Příkré ulici. Mladá fronta (Praha). ISBN 978-80-204-2592-8. In Czech.
  • Margolius Kovály, Heda (2015). Innocence; or Murder on Steep Street. Soho Crime (New York). ISBN 978-1-61695-496-3.
  • Kovályová, Heda a Třeštíková, Helena (2015). Hitler, Stalin a já: Ústní historie 20. století. Mladá fronta (Praha). ISBN 978-80-204-3625-2. In Czech.
  • Heda Margolius Kovály and Helena Třeštíková (2018). Hitler, Stalin and I: An Oral History. DoppelHouse Press (Los Angeles). ISBN 978-0-9987770-0-9, ISBN 978-0-9978184-7-5.

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j (registration required) Grimes, William (9 December 2010). "Heda Kovaly, Czech Who Wrote of Totalitarianism, Is Dead at 91". The New York Times.
  2. ^ Books and articles by and about Heda Margolius Kovály on WorldCat
  3. ^ a b Heda Margolius Kovály obituary, Ivan Margolius, The Guardian, Retrieved 14 September 2016
  4. ^ Gross, Tom (15 December 2010). "A Shy Little Bird Hidden in My Rib Cage". tomgrossmedia.com. Retrieved 30 December 2010.
  5. ^ Clive James, Cultural Amnesia, p. 366
  6. ^ Margolius Kovály, Heda (1991). Under A Cruel Star – A Life in Prague 1941–1968. Holmes & Meier (New York)ISBN 978-0-8419-1377-6, pp. 177-179.
  7. ^ Margolius Kovály, Heda (1986). Under A Cruel Star – A Life in Prague 1941–1968. Plunkett Lake Press (Cambridge, Massachusetts)ISBN 0-9614696-1-7.
  8. ^ "Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street".
  9. ^ 'In Slavic Languages, Life Happens to You', Marci Shore interview with Tom McEnchroe, Radio Praha, 23 March 2019, https://www.radio.cz/en/section/one-on-one/marci-shore-in-slavic-languages-life-happens-to-you
  10. ^ http://www.margolius.co.uk. 28 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ Frank Shatz, The Lake Placid News, 8 July 2011 http://www.lakeplacidnews.com/page/content.detail/id/503813/WORLD-FOCUS--A-Kafkaesque-tale.html?nav=5001&showlayout=0

Further reading edit

External links edit

  • margolius.co.uk, "Ivan Margolius – Heda Margolius Kovály" official website

December 02, 2023
heda, margolius, kovály, september, 1919, december, 2010, czech, writer, translator, survived, Łódź, ghetto, auschwitz, where, parents, died, later, escaped, whilst, being, marched, bergen, belsen, find, that, would, take, husband, made, deputy, minister, czec. Heda Margolius Kovaly 15 September 1919 1 5 December 2010 1 was a Czech writer 2 and translator She survived the Lodz ghetto and Auschwitz where her parents died She later escaped whilst being marched to Bergen Belsen to find that no one would take her in Her husband was made a deputy minister in Czechoslovakia and he was then hanged as a traitor As the wife of disgraced man she married again and she and her husband were treated badly They left for the US in 1968 when the country was invaded by the Warsaw Pact countries She published her biography in 1973 She and her husband did not return to her homeland until 1996 Heda Margolius KovalyKovaly in Prague 1992BornHeda Bloch 1919 09 15 15 September 1919 1 Prague Czechoslovakia 1 Died5 December 2010 2010 12 05 aged 91 1 Prague Czech Republic 1 OccupationWriter and translatorGenreMemoirist Contents 1 Early life 2 Concentration camp and Margolius marriage years 3 The Trial aftermath 4 Kovaly marriage years 5 Emigration from Czechoslovakia to the United States 6 Return to Prague 7 Writing 8 Death 9 Bibliography 10 See also 11 References 12 Further reading 13 External linksEarly life editShe was born Heda Bloch 1 to Jewish parents in Prague Czechoslovakia where she lived until 1941 when her family was rounded up along with first 5 000 of the city s Jewish population and taken to the Lodz Ghetto in central Poland 1 Concentration camp and Margolius marriage years editMarried to her childhood sweetheart Rudolf Margolius she was separated from her parents when the Jews were taken out of the Lodz ghetto on arrival to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 After arriving at Auschwitz she was chosen to survive though her parents were immediately gassed 1 and to work as a laborer in the Christianstadt labour camp When the Eastern Front of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union approached the camp its prisoners were evacuated With a few other women in the first months of 1945 it was decided while on this journey to Bergen Belsen to escape back to Prague After arriving in the city Margolius discovered that most of the people who remained in the city during the war were too frightened by the threat of German punishment to aid an escapee from the camps When Soviet forces finally freed Prague from Nazi control the Communist Party began to rise The experiences of her husband at Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps had led him to become a communist Having been asked he took a job with the Communist government of Klement Gottwald as Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade 3 despite his own and his wife s reservations about the position In 1952 her husband was found guilty of conspiracy 3 during the notorious Slansky trial Rudolf was one of the eleven Jews on the list of fourteen accused Having been prevented from seeing her husband for eleven months after his arrest and after he and the other arrested Jews gave false confessions extracted by torture Heda later learned that he had been hanged and his body cremated and given to security officials for disposal In a final indignity a few miles out of Prague the officials limousine began to skid on the icy road and his ashes were thrown under the wheels to create traction 4 Related to a people s enemy her life was made harder Heda was thrown out of her job and her apartment and then additionally persecuted for being unemployed and homeless 5 Their son Ivan Margolius was raised in impoverished conditions For as long as the Communist Party remained in power she was kept from good jobs and socially shunned She did not tell Ivan the truth about what happened to his father until he was sixteen years old The Trial aftermath editHeda protested against the Slansky trial to the Czechoslovak authorities and to the office of the Presidents of the Republic a number of times In 1966 she smuggled out of Czechoslovakia to Pavel Tigrid in Paris the secret ruling of the Czechoslovak Supreme Court cancelling the trial and its indictments in totality which Tigrid published as a supplement to his Svedectvi magazine in 1967 6 Kovaly marriage years editShe remarried in 1955 to Pavel Kovaly 1928 2006 Unfortunately his name was tarnished because of his association with her as the widow of the alleged traitor her first husband Rudolf Margolius 7 Emigration from Czechoslovakia to the United States editFinally in 1968 when once again Soviet Union troops invaded Prague after the Prague Spring and occupation seemed inevitable Margolius Kovaly fled Czechoslovakia to the United States She worked as a reference assistant librarian in the Harvard Law School Library at Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts Return to Prague editMargolius Kovaly returned to Prague to retire with her second husband in 1996 Writing editHer memoir was originally written in Czech and published in Canada under the title Na vlastni kuzi by 68 Publishers in Toronto in 1973 An English translation appeared in the same year as the first part of the book The Victors and the Vanquished published by Horizon Press in New York A British edition of the book excluded the second treatise and was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson under the title I Do Not Want To Remember in 1973 In 1986 she re published her memoirUnder A Cruel Star A Life in Prague 1941 1968 published in the United Kingdom as Prague Farewell The memoir is dedicated to her son and it has been widely translated and is available in French and English as an e book The memoir is also available in Chinese Spanish Italian Danish Romanian German Dutch Norwegian Japanese Persian In 1985 she published a novel called Nevina Innocence in Czech by Index Koln and republished in the Czech Republic in 2013 by Mlada fronta Praha The English translation by Alex Zucker was published by Soho Press New York in June 2015 8 Professor Marci Shore said of the book Although it is crime fiction and designed to be fine reading there is a deeper philosophical point which is that there is no innocence To participate in the resistance is to take on the guilt of retaliation and to not participate is to take on the guilt of passivity 9 Between 1958 and 1989 she translated from German or English into the Czech language over 24 works of well known authors such as Arnold Zweig Raymond Chandler Philip Roth Saul Bellow Arnold Bennett Muriel Spark William Golding John Steinbeck H G Wells and many others 10 In 2000 Kovaly participated in the making of Zuzana Justman s film A Trial in Prague In 2015 Mlada fronta Praha published Hitler Stalin a ja Ustni historie 20 stoleti by Heda Kovalyova and Helena Trestikova based on the full transcript of the 2001 TV film documentary Hitler Stalin a ja Death editMargolius Kovaly died in Prague age 91 after a long illness 1 A memorial plaque dedicated to Heda Margolius Kovaly together with her first husband Dr Rudolf Margolius is located on the family tomb at New Jewish Cemetery Izraelska 1 Prague 3 sector no 21 row no 13 plot no 33 directly behind Franz Kafka s grave 11 Bibliography editKovaly Heda and Kohak Erazim 1973 The Victors and the Vanquished Horizon Press New York ISBN 0 8180 1603 5 In Czech Na vlastni kuzi 68 Publishers Toronto 1973 Margolius Heda 1973 I Do Not Want To Remember Auschwitz 1941 Prague 1968 Weidenfeld and Nicolson London ISBN 0 297 76671 6 Novakova Helena 1985 pseudonym of Heda Margolius Kovaly Nevina Index Koln In Czech Margolius Kovaly Heda 1986 Under A Cruel Star A Life in Prague 1941 1968 Plunkett Lake Press Cambridge Massachusetts ISBN 0 9614696 1 7 Margolius Kovaly Heda 1997 Prague Farewell Indigo London ISBN 0 575 40086 2 Kindle edition on Amazon com or Amazon co uk also available Margolius Kovaly Heda 1997 Under A Cruel Star A Life in Prague 1941 1968 Holmes amp Meier New York ISBN 0 8419 1377 3 In Czech Na vlastni kuzi Academia Praha 2003 2012 Margolius Kovaly Heda 2010 Under A Cruel Star A Life in Prague 1941 1968 Plunkett Lake Press e book Kindle edition on Amazon com or Amazon co uk Margolius Kovaly Heda 2012 Under A Cruel Star A Life in Prague 1941 1968 Granta London ISBN 978 1 84708 476 7 Kovalyova Heda 2013 Nevina aneb Vrazda v Prikre ulici Mlada fronta Praha ISBN 978 80 204 2592 8 In Czech Margolius Kovaly Heda 2015 Innocence or Murder on Steep Street Soho Crime New York ISBN 978 1 61695 496 3 Kovalyova Heda a Trestikova Helena 2015 Hitler Stalin a ja Ustni historie 20 stoleti Mlada fronta Praha ISBN 978 80 204 3625 2 In Czech Heda Margolius Kovaly and Helena Trestikova 2018 Hitler Stalin and I An Oral History DoppelHouse Press Los Angeles ISBN 978 0 9987770 0 9 ISBN 978 0 9978184 7 5 See also editCultural Amnesia book Ivan Margolius Rudolf Margolius Slansky trial Erazim Kohak Under a Cruel Star book A Trial in Prague Helen EpsteinReferences edit a b c d e f g h i j registration required Grimes William 9 December 2010 Heda Kovaly Czech Who Wrote of Totalitarianism Is Dead at 91 The New York Times Books and articles by and about Heda Margolius Kovaly on WorldCat a b Heda Margolius Kovaly obituary Ivan Margolius The Guardian Retrieved 14 September 2016 Gross Tom 15 December 2010 A Shy Little Bird Hidden in My Rib Cage tomgrossmedia com Retrieved 30 December 2010 Clive James Cultural Amnesia p 366 Margolius Kovaly Heda 1991 Under A Cruel Star A Life in Prague 1941 1968 Holmes amp Meier New York ISBN 978 0 8419 1377 6 pp 177 179 Margolius Kovaly Heda 1986 Under A Cruel Star A Life in Prague 1941 1968 Plunkett Lake Press Cambridge Massachusetts ISBN 0 9614696 1 7 Innocence or Murder on Steep Street In Slavic Languages Life Happens to You Marci Shore interview with Tom McEnchroe Radio Praha 23 March 2019 https www radio cz en section one on one marci shore in slavic languages life happens to you http www margolius co uk Archived 28 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine Frank Shatz The Lake Placid News 8 July 2011 http www lakeplacidnews com page content detail id 503813 WORLD FOCUS A Kafkaesque tale html nav 5001 amp showlayout 0Further reading editMargolius Kovaly Heda 1986 Under A Cruel Star A Life in Prague 1941 1968 Plunkett Lake Press Cambridge Massachusetts ISBN 0 9614696 1 7 Margolius Kovaly Heda and Trestikova Helena 2018 Hitler Stalin and I An Oral History DoppelHouse Press Los Angeles ISBN 978 0 9987770 0 9 ISBN 978 0 9978184 7 5 Levy Alan Ivan Margolius Son of Conscience The Prague Post 27 November 2002 Margolius Ivan 2006 Reflections of Prague Journeys through the 20th Century Wiley London ISBN 0 470 02219 1 In Czech Praha za zrcadlem Putovani 20 stoletim Argo Prague 2007 ISBN 978 80 7203 947 0 In Italian Riflessi di Praga Poldi Libri Granze 2023 ISBN 978 88 940346 3 9 James Clive 2007 Cultural Amnesia Necessary Memories from History and the Arts W W Norton New York ISBN 978 0 393 06116 1 External links editmargolius co uk Ivan Margolius Heda Margolius Kovaly official website Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Heda Margolius Kovaly amp oldid 1171150435, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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