Reflections of Prague: Journeys Through the 20th Century

by Ivan Margolius

Reflections of Prague is the story of how a Czech Jewish family become embroiled in the most tragic and tumultuous episodes of the twentieth century.  Through their eyes we see the history of their beloved Prague, a unique European city, and the wider, political forces that tear their lives apart. Their moving story traces the major events, turmoil, oppression and triumphs of Europe through the last hundred years – from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the First World War; from the vibrant artistic and intellectual life of Prague in the times of Kafka, the Capek Brothers and Masaryk to years of hunger in a Polish ghetto and the concentration camps of Hitler; from the tyrannous rule of Stalin to the rekindled hopes of Dubcek and the subsequent Soviet occupation to liberation under Havel. Told from Ivan’s perspective, it is a poignant but uplifting tale that tells of life lived with purpose and conviction, in the face of personal suffering and sacrifice. ‘A remarkable book. This archetypical story of the twentieth century is intertwined with an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative of the history of the Czechs, of Prague, interspersed with samples of exquisite poetry by great contemporary poets. So the narrative flows like Eliot’s sweet Thames full of the debris of tragic lives, of horrors, of moments of beauty and testimonies of love – all against the backdrop of man’s inhumanity.’ Josef Škvorecký ‘A poignant and vivid mémoire of a child searching for traces of his father, lost in the murky ideologies of post war Central Europe.  An engrossing book.’ Sir John Tusa

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

336 pages, Hardcover

First published May 18, 2006

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recommended for a sense of Prague's recent history and the lives of those labelled as Jews through it, though the style isn't the most wonderful. I also had the sense that I would have understood some of the events he is describing in very different ways. Not so much due to cultural distance as because I am a woman, of a different generation, and of a very different social position -- and there is no reflection of such other understandings. For example, when he complains that after his father's terrible fall from grace in the party they have to leave their beautiful apartment and live with the poor people, I cringed a little. There's absolutely no awareness of how the existence of such terrible living conditions might have generated some non-delusional lack of sympathy for those in charge of the government, nor do they have to stay there long as they are supported by connections and are able to get some of their property back.

There are a few chapters that collect the experiences of many different people of being picked up by security forces, and of being interrogated. Those were very well done and gave a frightening sense of what that must have been like, the fear that must have generated. But there is a sense from these quotations that people had very different levels of awareness of what was happening and how party members were turning on each other, which it doesn't examine at all. It also seemed to let high ranking party members like Slansky a little off the hook, as it does the Czechs as a whole -- it seems a little too easy to put almost all of the blame onto the Russians.

What was most interesting -- and problematic -- was this as a way of constructing history. It is all told, with the exception of some long quotes from others, as though he is there observing, and as though he is inside other people's heads. For so much of it he clearly was not there, but there is no way to unpick what is his imagination, what comes from stories he has grown up with or from interviews he has done or from what he wants to believe or from more general social understandings of these events and their meaning. Because these are events are full of so much investment in meaning, from the brief independence between the wars to the Nazi occupation to soviet occupation. This suffers from neither being told by someone who actually lived through most of it with the immediacy (and more recognisable bias) of first hand experience, nor a later reconstruction with more awareness of competing understandings and storytelling.

[Tabitha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a heartbreaking book--the epitome of how books can transport us to places we otherwise could not imagine, and experience that which any of us hopefully will only have to witness through the pages of another's memoirs. The bulk of Margolius's book details the lives of his mother and father, their childhoods, their romance, their survival of Nazi ghettos and concentration camps, Communist Czechslovakia, and the Slansky trail. The last 40 pages or so, focusing on the author's life, seem a bit tedious after the heaviness of his parents' lives. Besides this small detraction, the book is worth a read, for both its insights into the Eastern European mind during and after WWII, as well as its unsparing look at both the best and worst that humanity can inflict upon itself.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in Czech history, European Jewish history, or both. The prose was not outstanding, but it was fine and not distracting. The weaving And structure of past and present was lovely. What made this book special was the story it told of 100 years of Czech history from the perspective of assimilated Jews, of the absurdity created by fascist regimes, of a man searching for identity and coming to terms with what the communist party did to his father -- executed him as a zionist/capitalist traitor as part of a propaganda war, in a life-imitating-kafka show trial, when his father had in truth been in a believer in all the party ideals.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having just finished his mother, Heda's book, I was pleasantly surprised at the continuity between his mother's experiences and his own. I really felt that what was need was Rudolf's own experiences to make the set. Fine descriptions of Prague. Some excellent atmospheric black and white prints to illustrate the book. Altogether an excellent read.

[Zuzana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not written as well as it could be, but the story is amazing(ly sad and real).