42 pages • 1 hour read
Heda Margolius KovályUnder A Cruel Star: A Life In Prague, 1941-1968
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1973A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 13-Chapter 15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary (Pages 138-143)
On November 20, 1952, news of Rudolf’s trail is on the front page of the newspaper. The trial is for the “anti-state conspiracy of Rudolf Slanksy.” Slansky, General Secretary of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia, has accused of high treason and arrested the year before, along with thirteen other government leaders, Heda’s own Rudolf among them. Eleven of the fourteen accused are of Jewish origin. Heda learns of this in the hospital. Many of the nurses loudly exclaim that the men should be hung.
Heda finds out that many of the accused have admitted to their crimes, and that their families have publically asked for harsh sentences. On the fifth day of the trial, Rudolf testifies. Heda convinces a nurse to let her listen to the trial’s broadcast with her that night, and Heda hears Rudolf’s voice for the first time in nearly a year.
Heda says that Rudolf’s voice sounds unfamiliar, and that he speaks words he has memorized in “an odd, tense, monotonous voice” (140). Lying, Rudolf says he:
had joined the Party only in order to betray it. He had devoted his energies to nothing but espionage and sabotage. He had enriched himself by taking bribes and, as a mercenary in the employ of the imperialists, he had plotted far-reaching conspiracies against the Republic and its people(140).
