Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948

by Madeleine Albright

Overview

Drawing on her own memory, her parents’ written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and newly-available documents, former US Secretary of State and New York Times bestselling author Madeleine Albright recounts a tale that is by turns harrowing and inspiring.

Before she turned twelve, Madeleine Albright’s life was shaken by some of the most cataclysmic events of the 20^th century: the Nazi invasion of her native Prague, the Battle of Britain, the attempted genocide of European Jewry, the allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War. 

In Prague Winter, Albright reflects on her discovery of her family’s Jewish heritage many decades after the war, on her Czech homeland’s tangled history, and on the stark moral choices faced by her parents and their generation. Often relying on eyewitness descriptions, she tells the story of how millions of ordinary citizens were ripped from familiar surroundings and forced into new roles as exile leaders and freedom fighters, resistance organizers and collaborators, victims and killers. These events of enormous complexity are shaped by concepts familiar to any growing child: fear, trust, adaptation, the search for identity, the pressure to conform, the quest for independence, and the difference between right and wrong. 

Prague Winter is an exploration of the past with timeless dilemmas in mind, a journey with universal lessons that is simultaneously a deeply personal memoir and an incisive work of history. It serves as a guide to the future through the lessons of the past, as seen through the eyes of one of the international community’s most respected and fascinating figures. Albright and her family’s experiences provide an intensely human lens through which to view the most political and tumultuous years in modern history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062030344
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/19/2013
Pages:	467
Sales rank:	12,076
Product dimensions:	5.36(w) x 7.86(h) x 1.17(d)

About the Author

Madeleine Albright served as America's sixty-fourth Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001. Her distinguished career also includes positions on Capitol Hill, the National Security Council, and as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. She is a resident of Washington, D.C., and Virginia.

Table of Contents

Setting Out l

Part I Before March 15, 1939

1 An Unwelcome Guest 21

2 Tales of Bohemia 27

3 The Competition 46

4 The Linden Tree 63

5 A Favorable Impression 93

6 Out from Behind the Mountains 117

7 "We Must Go On Being Cowards" 131

8 A Hopeless Task 164

Part II April 1939-April 1942

9 Starting Over 189

10 Occupation and Resistance 208

11 The Lamps Go Out 229

12 The Irresistible Force 252

13 Fire in the Sky 272

14 The Alliance Comes Together 294

15 The Crown of Wenceslas 320

Part III May 1942-April 1945

16 Day of the Assassins 341

17 Auguries of Genocide 368

18 Terezín 381

19 The Bridge Too Far 411

20 Cried-out Eyes 426

21 Doodlebugs and Gooney Birds 457

22 Hitler's End 478

Part IV May 1945-November 1948

23 No Angels 493

24 Unpatched 514

25 A World Big Enough to Keep Us Apart 529

26 A Precarious Balance 550

27 Struggle for a Nation's Soul 581

28 A Failure to Communicate 602

29 The Fall 616

30 Sands Through the Hourglass 631

The Next Chapter 653

Guide to Personalities 665

Time Lines 669

Notes 677

Acknowledgments 720

Credits 729

What People are Saying About This

Walter Isaacson

“I was totally blown away by this book. It is a breathtaking combination of the historical and the personal. Albright confronts the brutal realities of the Holocaust and the conflicted moral choices it led to. An unforgettable tale of fascism and communism, courage and realism, families and heartache and love.

Vaclav Havel

“A remarkable story of adventure and passion, tragedy and courage set against the backdrop of occupied Czechoslovakia and World War II. Albright provides fresh insights into the events that shaped her career and challenges us to think deeply about the moral dilemmas that arise in our own lives.”

Leon Wieseltier

“A genuinely admirable book. Albright skillfully returns us to some of the darkest years of modern times. Spring eventually came to Prague, but in much of the world it is still winter. The love of democracy fills every one of these instructive and stirring pages.”

Interviews

An essay from Madeleine Albright

On the evening of February 4, 1997, I led the cabinet into the House of Representatives prior to the President's annual address—the first woman ever to do so. Exchanging greetings with senators and other dignitaries, my heart should have been joyful; instead, I was stunned. That morning's Washington Post headline had read: "Albright Family Tragedy Comes to Light."

I was fifty-nine when I learned from a reporter and from certain letters I had received that my ancestral heritage was Jewish and that more than two dozen of my relatives had died in the Holocaust. The revelation shook my deeply ingrained sense of identity, and prompted me to seek answers to questions that I had never before thought to ask. That search began with visits to the small towns in Czechoslovakia where my parents had grown up and to the ancient synagogue where the names of Holocaust victims are enshrined. Prague Winter is a continuation of that personal journey, but also a much wider tale concerning a generation compelled to make painful moral choices amid the tumult of war.

In 1939, when efforts by British and French leaders to appease Hitler had backfired, the Nazis invaded my homeland. I was not yet two years old. My parents escaped with me to London where my father became head of broadcasting for the Czechoslovak government in exile. Strangers in an embattled land, we endured along with our new neighbors the terrible bombing of the Blitz. Back home, the German occupation quickly evolved into a reign of terror under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, "The Butcher of Prague." As preparations were made to exterminate the country's Jews, Czechoslovak parachutists returned to their native soil with a mission: to kill Heydrich — the only successful assassination of a senior Nazi during the war. In the months that followed that daring assault, Czechs suffered from Hitler's vengeance, while Jews confined to the infamous Terezin ghetto struggled to retain hope despite overcrowded conditions and the periodic departure of fellow inmates on trains to the east. In England, Czechoslovak leaders maneuvered to reclaim their country's independence; my mother and father agonized over the fate of loved ones who had remained behind.

From the day America entered the war, my parents and their friends were confident the Allies would win. As democrats from Central Europe, they prayed that the United States—not the Soviet Union—would wield the decisive postwar influence in our region. It was not to be. When at last the Nazis were defeated, Czechoslovakia became again a battleground between democracy and totalitarianism; before long, my family was forced into exile for the second time, finding a permanent home in America.

The story of Prague Winter is often as intensely personal as a mother's letter, a father's hidden sorrow, and the earnest artwork of an imprisoned ten-year-old cousin. The themes, however, are universal: loyalty and betrayal, respect and bigotry, accommodating evil or fighting back. What fascinates me is why we make the choices we do. What prompts one person to act boldly in a moment of crisis and a second to seek shelter in the crowd? Why do some people become stronger in the face of adversity while others quickly lose heart? What drives many of us to look down on neighbors based on the flimsy pretexts of nationality and creed? Is it education, spiritual belief, parental guidance, traumatic events, or more likely some combination that causes us to follow the paths that we do? My search for answers compelled me to look back—to the time of harshest winter in the city of my birth. —Madeleine Albright

Editorial Reviews

An extraordinary book. . . . Albright artfully presents a wrenching tale of horror and darkness, but also one in which decent and brave people again and again had their say.

István Deák

A blend of history and memoir that reveals in rich, poignant and often heartbreaking detail a story that had been hidden from her by her own parents. . . . The beating heart of the book is Albright’s searing account of her intimate family saga.

The Jewish Journal

Albright’s book is a sprightly historical narrative of this long decade. . . . Her account of the destruction of inter-war Czechoslovakia, both as a geographical entity and as an idea of democracy, first by the Nazis and then by the Communists, is balanced and vivid.

The Economist

In the crowded field of memoirs written by former secretaries of state, Madeleine Albright’s books stand out. . . . Albright is a charming and entertaining storyteller.

The New York Review of Books

A compelling personal exploration of [Albright’s] family’s Jewish roots as well as an excellent history of Czechoslovakia from 1937 to 1948. . . . Highly informative and insightful. . . . I can’t recommend Prague Winter highly enough.

The Washington Post Book World

A riveting tale of her family’s experience in Europe during World War II [and] a well-wrought political history of the region, told with great authority. . . . More than a memoir, this is a book of facts and action.

The Los Angeles Times

A remarkable story of adventure and passion, tragedy and courage set against the backdrop of occupied Czechoslovakia and World War II. Albright provides fresh insights into the events that shaped her career and challenges us to think deeply about the moral dilemmas that arise in our own lives.

Vaclav Havel

I was totally blown away by this book. It is a breathtaking combination of the historical and the personal. Albright confronts the brutal realities of the Holocaust and the conflicted moral choices it led to. An unforgettable tale of fascism and communism, courage and realism, families and heartache and love.

Walter Isaacson

A genuinely admirable book. Albright skillfully returns us to some of the darkest years of modern times. Spring eventually came to Prague, but in much of the world it is still winter. The love of democracy fills every one of these instructive and stirring pages.

Leon Wieseltier

Prague Winter is not only a family story-a proud and moving one-but a brilliant and multilayered account of how Czechoslovakia was formed along the most idealistic lines in the aftermath of World War I. An altogether fascinating and inspiring read.

Michael Korda

Albright has supplemented a deeply researched history of World War II-era Czechoslovakia with a moving family narrative.

The Daily

A gripping account of World War II. . . . In taut prose, Albright weaves a powerful narrative that wraps her family’s story into the larger political drama unfolding in Europe.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

"An extraordinary book. . . . Albright artfully presents a wrenching tale of horror and darkness, but also one in which decent and brave people again and again had their say."

Istvan Deak

The author’s childhood reminiscences of her first 11 years and savvy grasp of history inform this absorbing account of Czechoslovakia’s travails and Albright’s family’s suffering in the Holocaust. The daughter of a diplomat in the Czech government who migrated from Prague to wartime exile in London and back to postwar Prague, former secretary of state Albright (Madam Secretary) sketches lively recollections of weathering the Blitz and other adventures, but her narrative mainly investigates things hidden from her as a child. Raised a Catholic, Albright famously learned of her Jewish ancestry in middle age. She pens a moving portrait of life in the “model” ghetto at Terezín, near Prague, through which her relatives passed on their way to death camps. Centering the book is a searching diplomatic history of Czechoslovakia’s interwar democracy, which was abandoned to Hitler by the West and then snuffed out by Soviet-backed Communists. The story is enriched by Albright’s colorful thumbnails of Eduard Benes, Jan Masaryk, and other principals and by her insights into geopolitics, which yield sympathetic but clear-eyed assessments of the compromises statesmen made to accommodate the ruthless powers surrounding Czechoslovakia. Showing us villainy, heroism, and agonizing moral dilemmas, Albright’s vivid storytelling and measured analysis brings this tragic era to life. Photos. One-day laydown. Represented by Bob Barnett. (Apr. 24)

Publishers Weekly

Most people are aware of the result of the Munich agreement in 1938. Albright (born Marie Jana Korbelová), the first female U.S. secretary of state, provides a deeper account of the Czech Republic's road to independence. From Prague to the Terezin concentration camp (where many of her Jewish relatives perished) to the "winter" of the republic's existence as it endured the dictatorships of the Nazis and then the Communists, Albright details the situations and personalities prominent in this struggle. Though born only the year before the Munich agreement, Albright, the child of a Czech diplomat, has distinct insights into the moral dilemmas confronted by her countrymen. She spent the war in London with the exiled government and provides her childhood impressions of the Blitz. VERDICT Although categorized as a memoir, this book represents history made more vivid by Albright's personal perspective. It serves as a remembrance of the personalities who defined this era, including her father and other Czech democrats who helped create the independent republic after World War I. The accessible style and inclusion of notes and timelines make this an excellent addition to any library. Recommended to all who enjoy reading history from a personal perspective. [See Prepub Alert, 11/21/11.]—Maria Bagshaw, Elgin Community Coll. Lib., IL

Library Journal

The former U.S. secretary of state blends World War II–era history and memoir in her account of her discovery, at age 59, that she had lost more than two-dozen relatives in the Holocaust. Albright's (Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership, 2008, etc.) parents had never told her of her Jewish heritage, and in January 1997 she had only recently learned of it when a Washington Post reporter broke the larger story. She spent the ensuing years researching her family's history and the history of her native Czechoslovakia. She was aided in her endeavors by family material she found stored in boxes in her garage--and by a small research team. Born in 1937, the author naturally doesn't remember the war's earliest days, so the initial sections are principally a summary of history of the region and the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. Occasionally, she slips into the first person to talk about the activities of her father, a career diplomat, and her mother, a diplomat's wife but also a woman very interested in the supernatural. The most gripping parts are those personal stories; the others mostly repeat what can be found in many histories of the war and Holocaust. Retellings do not, of course, diminish the horror, but Albright sometimes focuses more on the politics and the war than on the remembrance. The personal passages increase in number and detail as she grows older. Also engaging are the later sections, which deal with the postwar politics in Czechoslovakia, especially the communists' moves to subvert the fledgling democracy. Although much is conventional history, the unconventional--the personal--animates and brightens the narrative.

Kirkus Reviews