HIS 1400 In the memoir Under A Cruel Star, Kovaly begins her narrative briefly talking about her experience during the Holocaust. Kovaly’s narrative becomes more in-depth when she begins to talk about the last days of the war, when she and others escaped from the concentration camps. As the plot thicken in this narrative, Kovaly talks about how she experienced life after her escape and under the Communist system in Czechoslovakia. During this time, Westerns considered the Soviet-style communism to an inhuman experience but some thought otherwise. In order to understand this paper as it relates to communism, you have to first get a clear understanding of what the communism system is about. Although there is no one real definition of how …show more content…
In the mornings when we stood for roll call long before dawn, a thick crust of hoarfrost covered the ground. It would not thaw until afternoon. We wore nothing but short shifts made of burlap, no shoes, no underwear………The trip to work took one hour. Then there was a half-hour hike to the factory, twelve hours passing along bricks, the trip back to camp, another roll call, a little turnip soup, a slice of bread, and a short restless night.(p.12)”
Even while going through this tough situation, Kovaly always found something positive to say to keep her hope alive. Before she said anything about the conditions at the camp, she stated how beautiful it looked outside. Also, in this same section of the narrative she stated how she found her happy place when looking at the cluster of trees as the sun rays broke through the mist, while she spent her days in the …show more content…
Was that so? After escaping and arriving to Prague, occupied by Nazis, Kovaly had no real place to go. The friends that were still there after she had been deported, were the only people she could turn to for help. Few of them took her in for a brief time so that she could eat and be on her way. Most of them refused though, because helping her would put them and their families at risk of being killed. As she continued to search for help she began to realize she was really alone now and that her escape was not what she expected but the attempt itself was magnificent. She knew if she would be caught death would be upon her; not being able to present identity papers or caught during street searches. Kovaly still did not give up. “I wanted to do something: to walk, to think, to see, to postpone death for just a little bit longer. To have someone to talk to me. To feel for one more moment that I still belonged to humanity. (p.36)” Help had come sooner than she thought. Distressed and lonely, Kovaly final sought help from the partisans, who helped hide her and supported Prague in the fight against