cover image In the Shadow of Prague

In the Shadow of Prague

Olly Komenda-Soentgerath. Forest Books, $21.95 (110pp) ISBN 978-1-85610-041-0

Like many others, Olly Komenda was born in Prague of German descent. She spoke Czech and thought of Prague as her home. When the Nazis invaded the Sudetenland, all the German theaters in Prague were shut down and Komenda's father, a theater technician, was forced to move. After the German's overran all of Czechoslovakia, the German theaters reopened and Komenda's father moved back to Prague but was resettled in Holeschowitz, the ""brown"" quarter, where the Nazis lived. By the time WWII was over, to live in Holeschowitz and to be of German descent was to be branded a collaborator, so Komenda was interned. In straightforward prose that isn't helped by a merely serviceable translation (""it sort of came to me, a brain wave.""), she describes hiding from threatened rape in a procession of monasteries and cinemas large enough to hold the German detainees. Still, she was rescued time and again by Czech guards, so while her detention was surely nerve-racking, it isn't (with the exception of the gang rape of a young mother) as horrifying as many other wartime accounts. But perhaps that is exactly what makes this interesting, the proof that after the horrors of the Nazi occupation, Komenda's Jewish neighbor, her half-Jewish schoolmate and numerous Czech strangers include her in the poor resources of their devastated community. (Nov.)