Reflections of Prague: Journeys Through the 20th Century [Hardcover]

"Never fall down!"

Roughly translated from the Czech refrain that author Ivan Margolius' resilient mother, Heda Margolius Kovaly, would often exclaim when life in the former Czechoslovakia threw their Margolius clan one too many rotten tomatoes.

Ivan and Heda, of course, are son and wife to the late Rudolf Margolius, a one-time deputy minister in the former Czechoslovakia's Ministry of Trade.

History reveals that on December 3, 1952, Rudolf and ten other falsely-accused -- mostly Jewish -- members of the former Communist government's inner circle were hanged in what has since become known as the "Slansky Affair" or "Slansky Plot." Slansky was a trumped-up list of charges that first Czechoslovak Communist President Klement Gottwald orchestrated against forteen prominent members of his administration.

The Slansky Plot was the culmination of a major part of Gottwald's Stalinist-inspired campaign of terror against the citizens of Czechoslovakia. His aim was to smash them into socialist submission, with Czechoslovakia at the time being the most "Western" of all the newly-established "Bloc" countries.

"Never fall down" became Ivan Margolius' mantra as he returned more than forty years later to the now-democratic Czech Republic to retrace his father's once-shining career's steps. Ivan's search lead him straight into the former Czechoslovak archives. From there it was where the author was successful in clarifying heaps of missing details that had eluded Ivan Margolius for most of his adult life about the life of his famous father.

Until the age of sixteen, Ivan hadn't precisely known the circumstances surrounding his father's passing. Heda, like most of her fellow citizens living under the socialist yoke, dreaded divulging any information about Rudolf Margolius to her lone son, fearful how it might affect his future work and life prospects inside the Communist system.

Featuring prominently in this book are letters. For instance, one is an ambiguously-crafted note Rudolf had penned to his young boy, which reveals shades of the inner-agony that Rudolf and his fourteen co-assused must have felt while awaiting their execution under the libels. It had been kept from author by Heda until well into Ivan's teens.

Since then, Ivan Margolius' life filled with a burning curiosity to truly know of the circumstances surrounding his father's tragic demise. By then, Ivan was already comfortably settled, living in exile in the British capital, London. It built up until he demanded to know just what had really happened to the man he once called 'Tato', Daddy?

Why had Rudolf Margolius been fingered as a "subversive spy" who "had endangered the health of Czechoslovakia's children?"

Were the charges laid against Rudolf Margolius even true?

Heda knew them to be falsehoods, all, yet Ivan just had to know for himself.

What emerged from the author's research was that Rudolf Margolius hardly even knew Rudolf Slansky, one of the Group of Fourteen rounded up in his eponymously-named trial. Rudolf Margolius hardly had a bad bone in his body, with Ivan remembering their times cavorting around the Czech countryside fondly. Rudolf Margolius was a dedicated father, husband, and moreover, as Ivan unearthed, had served the interests of the then-new Czechoslovak "people's republic" with all his heart.

Rudolf Margolius sincerely believed in the bold promises of Lenin-style Marxism. He renounced all claim to his capitalist past from before the War, and after Rudolf's return to Prague from the Dachau concentration camp, he instructed his wife Heda to liquidate all of their parents' former possessions and assets, dedicating the sale's profits to the State; such was the fervour of his dedication to the socialist cause.

Ivan Margolius needed answers to questions he could find only by returning to the sordid past. To the place where his life changed forever, Prague. The book tells that story...

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REFLECTIONS OF PRAGUE is a stunning walk down memory lane. Within a neatly-contained 300pp. of well-structured, sometimes whistful, but mostly evocatively-written narrative, Ivan Margolius finally discovers for himself just who the man once known as his father really was.

Margolius still awaits an official public apology from the present Czech authorities. As inheritors of the government which destroyed the life of his father, it is they who are responsible for issuing a Formal Sorry.

REFLECTIONS, however, is about that and more. It reflects, as its name states, on things such as:

** What Prague was like during its inter-war years.
** What life was like in the capital under Nazi occupation in the Protectorate.
** What became of Bohemia and Moravia's 88,000 Jews, more than 47,000 from Prague alone.
** Why Communism was such an "attractive" option for Czechs following WWII.
** How influential the Soviets were in Czechoslovak affairs, and how they had contributed to the state of terror in early '50s Czechoslovakia.

These broad strokes of Central European history are on full display as Ivan relives his mother and father's pasts.

REFLECTIONS contains anecdotal evidence Ivan had heard from Heda over the years, and makes available his painstaking research into the former Communist state's archives. In his attempt to recreate the atmposhere extant at the time his father death, Margolius succeeds masterfully.

I consider REFLECTIONS to be an essential primer for anyone with more than a passing interest in Czech history.

If you're looking for an easy-to-read book on Prague written by a son of one of its most illustrious families, the Margoliuses, then stop searching. You've found it.

Five stars.

Ivan Margolius is the only son of Jewish parents who were raised in Prague and who lost almost their entire families to the Nazi death camps. Ivan was born to Rudolf and Hedy after they survived concentration camp incarceration and had returned to Prague to resume life. Now, this is where the Margolius family differed from many Holocaust survivors. Instead of leaving their home land for lives in Israel, the US, Canada, or Australia, they chose to remain in Prague and become part of the Communist regime. Both parents had fairly high jobs and lived a good life in the late 1940's and '50's. Rudolf Margolius was a trusted government economic official who was "trusted" enough by the state to travel to the West on government business. But, in the late 1950's Rudolf was caught up in the Slansky Trial in Prague. Tried and convicted on trumped-up charges, he was put to death by the Czech government, under orders from the Soviet Union. Eventually,after his death, he was "cleared" of the charges against him. His widow and child lived in Prague in grim conditions until they were able to leave Czechoslovakia for London. Today, Ivan Margolius is a noted architect and designer.

The Margolius family's history is really the history of Czechoslovakia in the 20th century. From the early years, the Jewish families on both sides of Ivan's family made their way from lower middle class to moderate wealth and power, through WW1, the creation of Czechoslovakia in the 1920's to the stunning betrayal of the country by their allies - France and Britain at Munich - which allowed the Germans to take over the country, piece by piece.
Surviving the Nazi years, but they couldn't get through the years of Communist rule. Margolius is an excellent writer of his family's history and that of his country's. He imagines conversations of previous generations, but that's not a problem here. He's a clear writer and one who deserves to be read. His story, and that of his family, needed telling, and he did it quite well.