“Some people came back silent, and some talked incessantly as though talking about a thing would make it vanish. Actually, just the opposite is true: once things and thoughts are expressed and described they acquire a new reality, as though by giving them words we give them a part of ourselves. After that, they will not allow us to leave them behind.†🇨🇿💔
pickI love reading about Czechoslovakia. The history of this region amazes me. Kovály's memoir is one of so much turmoil. She survived a concentration camp all to have her life further degraded by the Soviet Union and its communist occupation. This area has known such little peace. What an amazing story.
pickA remarkable book written by an amazing woman. It's moving, heartbreaking and at the same time inspiring. The strength and love of life under the hardships she had to endure are truly inspiring. I don't think I would have been able to survive what she did without hating mankind.
I was unable to take the advice of people who kept telling me that the only way back to life was to forget. I wanted to save everything, to cover up nothing, to keep things inside me the way they had been, and to live with them. I wanted to live because I was alive, not just because by some accident I was not dead.
It seemed to me that I was holding my fragile freedom cupped in my hands. ... my life was no longer broken in two. Suddenly there was continuity. I was no longer a camp inmate, a victim destined for destruction, but a human being, a woman with a past and a future.
This book is an important read right now. That being said, this is the challenge I've been waiting for my entire life. Back in 1993, my father was allowed to take the family on sabbatical with him to Prague. I was just 4 but it was the most wonderfully life-altering experience of my life. Prague is the most beautiful city and it will forever be my second home. I got to go back w/hubby in January & it's still as amazing as ever, w/the best beer
Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968 | 
