Under A Cruel Star By Heda Margolius Kovaly

In the Novel Under A Cruel Star, Heda Margolius Kovaly sheds light on the repercussions of not only the German concentration camps in World War 2, but also shows how the War led to the adoption, practice, and repercussions of a hostile communist government. In this novel courage, not only in a power to survive, but in a power to provide for family, is the most prevalent issue brought about in Hedas retelling of her time in the concentration camps and her time as wife to a communist official. One of the most endearing facts about Heda in her retelling of her experiences is that fact how despite everything that she had observed, participated in, and been subjected to she still remained “human” in that she was not misguided by hate and anger but …show more content…
This force arguably was the force that shaped her most due to the age at which this force took place, in that being at a younger age during the time of concentration camps she was sparred from the gas chambers because she was deemed useful for work camps. In this time she saw her mother pulled away from her and killed, she was forced to take cold train rides, head shaven, and in the cold morning air to a factory where her work was to be completed. Heda though mentions that even though most girls hated the train ride she enjoyed it because she could look at a situation and still find beauty. She mentioned how on thre train she would always look for the trees coming out of a thick morning fog and in a sense this foreshadows most of the life a head of her. Her life would come to be engulfed in such a thick fog that when it would clear slightly, like when her savings accounts book were returned to her after being confiscated, she could see a glimpse of beauty. Nevertheless, Heda managed to escape the concentration camps and when she returned to Prauge she gets a crash course in seeing how people outside the concentration camps were dealing with this totalitarian regime. She notices the changes in her homeland, she notices the timid behavior of everyday people and she is even turned away by one of her closest friends Jenda due to fear of being …show more content…
Turmoil, corruption, injustices happen every single day and yet people like Heda who had gone through arguably the worst parts of humanity still came out in the end with a positive outlook on what is ahead. Her son Ivan ended up becoming an architect and se left the country that gave her so much hardship in search of something new. In conclusion, the strong forces of Stalin and Hitler while terrible and painful, were still not enough to silence the third force in her life and that is the force to survive, show love, give love, and never lose hope. In her retelling of the story and in her conclusion the reader is shown that no matter how foggy the horizon is there is always a glimpse of hope when the fog clears. This important message is the most prominent and underlying message in the novel, and leads one to believe the most predominant force that shaped her life was