Hitler, Stalin and I

by Heda Margolius Kovály

  My mother came from near Prague – she was born in Suchdol. She told me that in those days there were no newspapers, but when someone arrived from Prague, which was quite a long distance then, he brought varied news of what was happening in the world. She told me this when we were in Łódź (Litzmannstadt) Ghetto. Mom remembered that someone came and said: “They have killed a person, a murder was committed.” And people stood on the village green and said: “Did you hear? They have killed someone …” That was an enormous, terrible thing. They had killed a person. And then everything changed.

  We have to understand what all this meant and the great transformations that affected the generation of people who were growing up during the First World War. After the war the times were very difficult. But people managed to overcome that very quickly, and the First Czechoslovak Republic became a truly outstanding state. During its twenty-year existence a really glorious, noble society of people who worked eagerly and were proud of what they could achieve grew into being, which even today doesn’t exist in what is now the Czech Republic.

  What did your father do?

  When my father returned from the war he was partly an invalid and had health problems. Yet, before the war he met one very clever man, who had some capital, and another clever man who was a skilled blacksmith and well acquainted with metalwork, and the three founded a small company. When I grew up, gained some experience and discovered what was happening around me, I was about ten years old, and by then their company, which employed many people, was a large factory called Waldes Koh-i-noor in Prague’s suburb of Vršovice. The main owner was Jindřich Waldes, a great supporter of the arts and a good man.

  They named the enterprise after the famous Koh-i-noor diamond. They began with a very small workshop. During the First Republic there was an outstanding society here. When people had the skill and eagerness to work and a bit of luck, it could get them into an advantageous situation, enabling them to give more people the opportunity to work. All of that was very promising, but it came to nothing. That factory is still there, but I don’t much like to go and see it anymore.

  They made all possible kinds of small metal objects such as buttons, safety pins and special fasteners and zippers. I didn’t follow it closely, but it was interesting because these were new inventions that made day-to-day life easier. The well-known Czech painter František Kupka, who was a good friend of Mr. Waldes, helped design the company logo, which featured a young woman with a fastener in one eye as if it were an eyeglass. I was still a small girl, and I remember when Kupka came to visit. He taught me to paint and draw and advised me how to hold a pencil – and how I had to draw right from my shoulder. Kupka was an exceptional man.

  People dressed well then; they tried to look good. Had this republic persevered, it could have been very successful, prospering well, because in those days people had a different moral code than today. They were proud of what they did and of their work – it was the pride and self-confidence, and that obviously helped. They told themselves: “We will show what we can do.” And they got on with it, and that did it – initiative and free thinking.

  What were your family ideals during the First Republic?

  My father was a fervent Czech patriot. He respected President T. G. Masaryk greatly and told us stories about the Prague writers – Karel and Josef Čapek, Franz Werfel, Franz Kafka, Max Brod and other literary figures – some of whom he had known personally. I could never understand why we would have had greater problems or any other life than my friends at school.

  It was definitely a mistake, because if one knows that he or she suffers as a result of something – such as one’s own religion – then he or she can bear it better. For us it was a shock; for me the world was turned upside down. Suddenly we were the bad people. Why, what had we done? But I didn’t want to understand those people. I wanted to preserve my sense that it was simply a perversion and that it could never be repeated; although, all of this obviously would depend on the situation developing into the future.

  When Hitler came, Germans occupied the factory, and Mr. Waldes, who was Jewish, was taken to Pankrác prison in Prague. Immediately my father found a woman whose apartment windows overlooked the prison courtyard, so she could observe it. She reported that when the Nazis took Waldes around the yard, he continued to struggle with them.

  His family was already in the United States. But Waldes, like my father, declared that he wouldn’t run away because of some lance corporal and would stay in Prague. The whole factory depended on continued management. Had they left the workers, they wouldn’t have known how to carry on with the manufacture, and the company would have collapsed. So Waldes and my father remained, but Waldes’ children and relatives in the States, where the factory also had a branch, tried to get him out of the country. Through their lawyers they offered the Germans an enormous amount of money to release him from captivity and allow him to join his family. In the end after his further detention in Dachau and Buchenwald, it was arranged that Waldes would be taken to Portugal. From there a ship would sail to America and bring him to New York. In those days most long journeys like this were undertaken by ship.

  It was agreed and quite theatrically arranged that the Germans would bring Waldes, and the Americans would stand on the opposite side and ask: “Are you Jindřich Waldes?” And if he answered yes, they would pass the money to the Germans. It was exactly like in a film. And that is how it happened – the Germans handed him over to the Americans. They took him onto the ship, and by the time the ship had stopped in Havana on its way to the States, Waldes had died. He had been perfectly healthy, a very strong man. It was explained later that before the Germans released him, they gave him an injection. They ensured he would never talk about his experiences. And that was the end.

  For some time my father continued to go to the factory despite the fact that it was taken over by the Germans. My father had to keep order. He was a keen workaholic, and my mother was always angry with him that he didn’t devote enough time to his family. But he was very kind; my parents were very good people.

  To this day I keep having awful misgivings that I was the only one to survive from a family of such decent people. I wasn’t distinguished by any good deeds; I was just an ordinary girl. But my parents were such exceptional people, and they died so miserably – and I am still here. When I returned from the concentration camps to Prague Vinohrady where we had lived, every now and then I met someone we knew. People were tearful and said: “Your mother was so helpful then, when we needed it so much.” Then a girl came: “Your parents gave me money so I could finish my studies. They paid my college fees.” My father, for example, gave film projectors to a home for sick children, so they could use them to show films to help them learn and study. People told me of all the good my parents did for them and how they loved them.

  German soldiers draping Nazi flags over the Jan Hus monument by Ladislav Šaloun, Old Town Square, Prague, circa mid-March 1939.

  Courtesy Česká televize.

  II

  A SMALL BLOKE IN A DIRTY TRENCH COAT

  THE BEGINNINGS OF FASCISM and THE OCCUPATION

  At the end of the 1920s the great economic crisis broke out, which had an enormous influence on everything that happened after. I was still a small child, but there was a real dreadful poverty then. My mother was a member of various societies where women got together to try to help others. One day my mother said: “Come, we’ll go and visit a friend and bring her some presents.” We came to the Prague suburb of Vršovice, to where some old withdrawn railway coaches stood and in which people lived. My mother’s friend had married recently and was living in one of those coaches. How those people lived there I couldn’t imagine – where they had their water supply and what sort of hygiene facilities – but despite that, they had a refuge. There were terrible living conditions then. But what did I know? In Czechoslovakia it wasn’t as bad as in Germany or the United States; in some districts there was famine. And all of this affected peo
ple during the First Republic.

  The cultural relations between Czechoslovakia and France also had great influence. In France, of those who were well-known writers, ninety percent were interested in the Soviet Union, and even if they weren’t Communists, they were Communist sympathizers. It was such an exciting time. My parents and their contemporaries said how it was so alluring, such an adventure – the foundation of the Soviet Union after the war, new ideas, Isadora Duncan dancing barefoot in Red Square, Vladimir Mayakovsky composing epic poems, Maxim Gorky’s writing. All of that was a great explosion of creativity. Everybody was more or less influenced by it, and it was difficult not to agree with it because from the first moment, we were told only the good things. The atrocities that occurred were never talked about. When the French writer André Gide wrote Retour de l’USSR [1936], where he criticized the Soviet Union, Czech Communist fanatic Stanislav Kostka Neumann quickly produced the polemic Anti-Gide [1937]. Neumann never visited the Soviet Union, but he didn’t believe that Gide’s views could ever be true.

  Adolf Hitler at the Munich Conference with European leaders, discussing the annexation by Germany of the Czechoslovak “Sudetenland,” Munich, September 1938. President Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia was not invited, and the Munich Accord was signed after midnight on September 30, 1938.

  Adolf Hitler’s characteristic emotional appeal to his nationalist base during speeches to the German people, no date.

  Courtesy Česká televize.

  The atmosphere that developed during the First World War and afterward made it very favorable for people to turn left politically, as it was described in those days. It was true that in contrast to the Fascists who emphasized only the bad human characteristics – greed, hatred, desire for power and war – the Communists elevated the best human characteristics: altruism, ability to sacrifice oneself and trust in people and in the goodness that resides in each human being. All that was very dangerous – too much optimism was a very dangerous view. There was still time for the progression toward full Communism, but while I was growing up between the wars I could observe this. In the Liberated Theatre in Prague they were singing: We will march in millions, all against the wind; E.F. Burian, the Communist playwright, journalist and director, staged beautiful theatrical productions – we were all more or less affected by it.

  Then in Germany, Fascism emerged, stemming from the economic crisis. There was terrible poverty and then also inflation. I heard of people going shopping with carts full of money, which had no value, and there was great misery and destitution. All of that was fodder for Herr Hitler. My father was a very clever and talented man who traveled a lot. After he came back from Munich, we were sitting at dinner, and he said to my mother: “Listen Marta, I’ve also seen that Hitler there. He is a small bloke in dirty trench coat, a total zero. It’s ridiculous.” My clever dad said about Hitler that he was totally ridiculous. He was such a self-confident man.

  We all know what happened next. That was the beginning of all that dreadful suffering. Before the Munich Conference in September 1938 there was an amazing atmosphere in Czechoslovakia – people didn’t want to give in. They were ready to fight. I remember how the young men behaved. My first husband Rudolf, who I had known since childhood and who was my friend, was also in the Czechoslovak Army then. We went to visit him and saw the zeal of the soldiers and the will not to give in, not to retreat and not to submit – that was something fantastic. When the mobilization was announced on September 23rd, 1938, my parents sat at the wireless, and when they played the national anthem, my father, the old patriot, stood at attention.

  from top: The Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia and the occupation of Prague, March 15, 1939.

  Courtesy Česká televize.

  I hurried outside – we lived near Fochova Avenue (now Vinohradská) in Vinohrady. I ran to the main street and saw a girl wearing a red floral skirt embracing a soldier in a doorway. When the tram came, several young men carrying small wooden cases that were used during the mobilization sprinted up and jumped onto the tram – quickly, quickly – because the moment the mobilization announcement came, everyone was already prepared to defend their country. And that boy also set himself free from the girl’s embrace and jumped onto the tram. I stood there and looked at them, and suddenly I heard how the girl started crying aloud. Then I thought: “Oh dear, these are the first tears of this war.”

  As we know, it wasn’t long. The full occupation of the truncated Czechoslovakia came on March 15th, 1939, a fateful historical day when the Germans seized Prague and the rest of Bohemia and Moravia. By then I was older. We stood outside, it snowed heavily, tanks and armored cars drove through Wenceslas Square. People shook their fists, and women cried. And we still never suspected what would happen, but for us it was already the end of it all. We could’ve left the country without difficulties then, but my father – he was like me – he was so attached to his homeland, just as I am to Prague. During those 28 years I lived in the United States I continually craved only to return to Prague. And my father was a man from a small farmstead in a beautiful Bohemian countryside, where people really clung to the soil and to their surroundings. We used to visit my grandmother there, and I remember how wonderful it had been there, how that countryside was delightful. My father used to tell me always: “Whenever in life you feel low, for relief, go back to nature.”

  Then it was hoped that the situation would sort itself out somehow. But that optimism was totally out of place. The war had started and people were saying: “Why, it won’t last long, the Allies will make mincemeat of them.” In September 1939 Britain declared war on Germany, and as Jews we lived for some time with great restrictions forbidding many activities. But we could still exist; we could still meet. We arranged gatherings – we all loved music, and among us there were a number of very talented musicians. One young woman used to meet us – her name was Dana Šedková, a great pianist and a wonderful person – and we had private soirees at an apartment of one of my relatives’ who owned a piano. Afterward when we went home, we were afraid because we had been forbidden to be on the streets after dark. Rudolf and I were already together, and he had a very good friend who had been an organist at the church of St. James [Sv. Jakub] in Prague’s Old Town. We couldn’t go anywhere, and he said: “You know what, come on Sunday mornings, sit on the stairs leading up to the organ, and I’ll perform for you whatever you wish.” He played concerts for us during the mass.

  Rudolf Margolius and Heda Blochová, wedding photograph, Prague, April 3, 1939.

  Vinohrady synagogue, postcard.

  Courtesy Margolius Family Archive.

  What kind of music did you ask him to play?

  He always had to play Bach, that was necessary, and of course Dvořák, or anything he could muster. It was really beautiful and even today when we have returned to Prague, my son wanted me to show him where, together with Rudolf, I had sat on those steps. We were young, and when you are young, your life spirit is so strong that you aren’t troubled much. We didn’t think too far ahead. We kept saying always that somehow we would overcome any situation.

  In April 1939 at my wedding with Rudolf, held at Vinohrady synagogue, only my father and mother, Rudolf’s parents, one of my friends and two policemen, one in front and one behind, were present. My relationship with Rudolf was enormously positive. The first time we met I was nearly thirteen years old. I lived in Vinohrady on Chodská Street and he, around the corner on Lužická Street. I went to buy a bag of marbles from a local store that sold all sorts of goods. I saw a young man walking toward me, looking at me. I looked at him, and he walked past me. I said to myself: “Why is that boy looking at me so?” I turned around, and he stood on the corner watching me. That was my reason for remembering him.

  By chance he was going out then with my cousin, Marta Kafková, who was about three years older than I was and who later voluntarily went with her mother to the gas chambers in Auschwitz. After some time I visited my cousin – she had her friends t
here and among them was Rudolf. He came up to me straight away and said: “We have seen each other there and then.” Before this, the first time he saw me, he told my cousin Marta: “Today I met a young girl on the street. I’ll wait ‘til she is older and marry her.” That was something really exceptional. And he waited and married me when I was nineteen.

  Even during the most terrible suffering and the most terrible situations I never, never, even for a minute regretted marrying him, not even for a second. Only to be near him was extremely gratifying. He could explain things without being patronizing. He radiated goodness, kindness and a sense of fairness and decency – and his selfless personality – all that was inspiring. At the same time he was fun to be with; he wasn’t some saint ‘carved in wood.’ He was very exceptional. Thank God, Ivan is very much like him. There have been so many times I have felt contempt for myself when I have realized how much worse a person I have been than Rudolf.

  Heda Blochová and Rudolf Margolius at their wedding, Prague, April 1939.

  Courtesy Margolius Family Archive.

  That is why what happened was such an abominable crime. Today when I recall the monstrosities he suffered in such a short life, so many years in concentration camps – he was in Łódź Ghetto, then in Auschwitz, then in a small Riederloh concentration camp, then in Mühldorf and lastly in Dachau – and seven years after the liberation such a dreadful end. Even today when I remember this, I can’t accept it. Is it possible for one person to be so doomed?

  Example of barbed wire in the openings of rail wagons that were used to transport people to concentration camps and ghettos, circa 1940s.

  Courtesy Česká televize.