Under a Cruel Star: A Life In Prague, 1941-1968

Heda travels to her friend Marta’s house, where she learns that Marta’s husband Vlada has joined the Resistance. Vlada is fearful and unwilling to help Heda. While Marta and Vlada argue, Heda sneaks out into the street. She walks a long way to where other acquaintances live. At Otto and Milena’s house, Heda finds people willing to harbor her, but Milena has children, so Heda decides that she cannot put them at risk.

Heda spends the night in an empty apartment managed by an elderly couple she knows. The apartment is vacant only for that single night, so the next day she finds herself on the streets again. She visits yet another old friend, Zdena, whose mother opens the door and, in shock, sends her away. She cries, “For God’s sake, go away! Can’t you see? This child! For the sake of the child, go! Please! Go!” (34). Devastated, Heda walks into the fields beyond the city.

Heda spots a church and, thinking it a safe space, walks inside. She begins to cry. The priest gives a sermon about those who pitied Christ on the cross but did nothing to help him. Heda considers walking up to the priest after mass and saying, “Here’s your opportunity to put your teachings to work. Help me” (34). She decides not to approach the priest, skeptical of those who profess their humanity, since she has seen so often how fear overrides good intention.

Heda plans to drown herself in the river. She stands on a bridge. She imagines “the freedom of a bird, the freedom of the wind, a freedom without people. A freedom without exit, lonely and as terrifying as the river below” (35). Two soldiers approach and jostle her, but they are not German soldiers, as Heda has feared. They laugh and let her go. Heda wanders the streets in a daze. She finds herself at the apartment of a male friend, Ruda, where her friend Marta has been waiting for her. Ruda is gone, so Heda stays at the apartment. She collapses from exhaustion.

A week or so later, a letter is delivered to the apartment instructing Heda to meet a man in the park. The man has been sent by Ruda to help her. “Stop being afraid,” he tells her upon their meeting: “We’ll help you. Everything will be all right” (37). At this moment, an SS officer walks by. Heda grabs her companion’s arm, and the officer doesn’t challenge them. The two of them walk up a steep, snowy street she has never traveled on before.

The war ends “the way a passage through a tunnel ends” (39). In the weeks leading up to the war’s end, Heda is lonely and isolated. She listens to the radio just to hear another human voice, but the announcers lie about German victory. Her friends bring a wounded Russian to where she is hiding, and Heda nurses him. Soon, he is taken away, and she is left alone again.

Occasionally, Heda moves to a new hiding spot for safety. Spring blooms around her, and she struggles to stay indoors. Every day, even though it is foolish to do so, she ventures outside to be “under the greening trees” (40). At night, she listens to the BBC, which transmits coded messages for the Resistance. The penalty for owning a short-wave radio is death.

Ruda returns to Prague. On May 5, the regular radio broadcast is interrupted. A voice on the radio urges Prague to “rise up and liberate the city” (40). Heda sees men entering the street carrying rifles and other weapons. Heda decides she will be most useful at the Red Cross center.

The medical center is staffed mostly with affluent housewives. When the staff members are told that someone is needed to carry out a covert operation, Heda quickly volunteers. After a long while, another woman decides to volunteer too. The two of them, dressed in Red Cross uniforms, travel to the train station. There, a basket disguised as a parcel containing medical equipment awaits them. They grab the basket, which is full of weapons, even though German soldiers are nearby.

Soon, a young German soldier stops them in the street. The woman with whom Heda is traveling diffuses the situation by offering the soldier a roll of gauze. Heda writes, “I shall always remember that woman with love. If courage is the capacity to conquer one’s fear, she was the most courageous person I have ever met” (42).

On the fifth day of battle, a column of Russian tanks enters the city, demonstrating that the Germans have been defeated. The inhabitants of Prague rush into the street, cheering. Girls cover the tanks with flowers. Heda walks out to the edge of town and admires the sunset: “It was that moment just before sunset,” she writes, “when outlines briefly become sharp and clear and colors more brilliant, reminding us that the night is short, that darkness comes and then goes again” (44).

Although the War is now over, “no one had quite survived” (44). Tensions between people do not dissipate. Those who were persecuted during the Nazi invasion still suffer injustice. After a while, Heda works up the courage to visit her family’s vacation home in the village of Hut. At this point, she believes she is her family’s only survivor.

When she arrives, the trees in the orchard “were past their bloom and no one seemed to be about” (47). The door is locked. She rings the bell and, soon, a “fat unshaven man” opens the door and yells, “So you’ve come back! Oh no! That’s all we needed!” (47). Heda retreats into the woods and listens to the birds.

Every day, Heda listens to the radio to hear news of liberated prisoners. One day, she hears her father’s name announced. Heda can hardly believe the news, as she thought both her parents had been killed. She rushes to the radio station. Although there is a crowd outside, they let her enter. The radio announcer agrees to pass a message to her father over the air instructing him to call the station. Heda waits for hours until the announcer tells her to return home and that he will call if a message comes through. She hears nothing. Heda finds out that her former lover Rudolf Margolius is alive. He is “the best man in the world” (49).

Heda picks flowers. Heda’s broadcast message to Rudolf is interrupted when the power fails. Heda later learns that, at the camp, the other prisoners debated whether the message to Rudolf had come from his beloved Heda. They are so invested in their story that when they finally come to Prague, they all wait for Rudolf to call the radio station to verify that she sent the message. When they learn that it was Heda who called, they are gleeful.