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Ivan Margolius: Son of conscience
His father was hanged in the Slansky affair
The Prague Post (November 27, 2002) Fifty years ago, on Thursday, Nov. 27, 1952, in what history now calls The Slansky Trial, 14 defendants -- all of them communists and all but three of them Jews -- were found guilty of Trotskyism, Titoism, Zionism and espionage for the West. Six days later, 11 were hanged in Pankrac prison. Among them were Rudolf Slansky, ex-secretary general of the Czechoslovak Communist Party; ex-Foreign Minister Vladimir Clementis; and Rudolf Margolius, 39, ex-deputy minister of foreign trade. Margolius and his widow, Heda, were victims of fascism and communism. Prewar sweethearts (she'd survived deportation to Lodz and Auschwitz; he, Dachau) they'd married in 1939 and joined the Communist Party in 1945. A son, Ivan, was born in 1947. From the night in early 1952 when her husband was arrested on his way home and the secret police -- bearing his emptied briefcase -- showed up to search their home in Prague 7, Heda Margoliuso-va's mission was to spare little Ivan the label of "traitor's son." During the post-midnight search, she saw to it that her tormentors didn't wake him when inspecting his toy chest and drawers. On death's eve Mother and son were shunned by "friends," neighbors and nursery schoolmates. But Heda must have done a good job of shielding Ivan. On the night before her husband's execution, toward dawn Dec. 3, 1952, she was allowed to visit him in Pankrac and, through a web of wire, told him about "our handsome, cheerful little son who sings all day long." When she had them both smiling, Rudolf Margolius told Heda: "Please think of Ivan, not of me."
"Don't worry about me or the boy," she assured him. "I'll raise him well, I promise you." "Forget me, Heda," the condemned man said. "Find him a new father. Don't stay alone." "I know I have to take care of him," she confessed, "but believe me, I'd rather go with you. That's easier than living." But she did live and does live. She fought hard not just to protect her son but to clear her husband's name (it took her 11 years and she had to smuggle his secret vindication to the West), obtain a death certificate to prove she was widowed (which took two years) and trace his ashes. At first, when Rudolf was arrested, Heda told Ivan that his father had gone away on a trip. Later, she "informed" him he'd died abroad. "Don't worry, Mommy," the little boy responded. "I'll take care of you." Twice in childhood, his name was changed. When he entered primary school, his mother enrolled him as Ivan Marek. In 1961, after Heda did remarry, her second husband, editor Pavel Kovaly, adopted Ivan and gave him his name, which was soon be-smirched because Kovaly had married Margolius' widow. Kovaly lost his job and was reduced to manual labor. But making the lad Kovaly instead of Margolius won him the chance to attend academic secondary school and begin architecture studies at Czech Technical University in 1965. Only when Ivan was 15 did his mother tell him the truth about his father's fate. A family exits In the thaw that preceded 1968's reformist Prague Spring, freedom of travel enabled Pavel Kovaly to visit Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a seminar at Harvard University, where he wound up as a professor of philosophy. It also allowed Ivan Margolius Marek Kovaly to transfer in 1966 to Regent Street Polytechnic in London. Heda escaped to Boston soon after 1968's Soviet-led invasion: "I was afraid that if I stayed, I might never see Ivan and Pavel again. And I couldn't stand the sight of the murderers of my [first] husband walking around Prague with their weapons." As soon as he settled in England, Ivan changed his name legally back to Margolius. Says Ivan Margolius of Rudolf Margolius: "I remember him very fleetingly, mostly from photos. What I remember most I didn't witness. But my mother told me that, as the guards who'd been monitoring their last conversation were parting them forever, my father's last words to her were, 'I just wanted to tell you I read a good book while I was here. It's called Men of Clear Conscience.' There was, of course, no such book. It was his message to her and me and the world." Nobody has conveyed that message more powerfully than the tragically bereaved Heda Margolius, who retired as a reference librarian at Harvard Law School and returned to Prague with Kovaly in 1996. She wrote a powerful memoir that belongs on shelves of both classic Holocaust and Cold War literature. Published in English under four titles since 1973 -- currently, Prague Farewell -- it cannot be read without tears and outrage. Back in 1963, after Rudolf Margo-lius was posthumously "rehabilitated" by the Communist Party, a committee from the Social Welfare and Finance ministries offered Heda compensation for "lost property." She told them: "You murdered my husband. You threw me out of every job I had. You had me thrown out of a hospital when I was ill! You threw us out of our apartment and into a hovel where only by some miracle we didn't die. You ruined my son's childhood. And now you think you can compensate me with a few crowns? That you can buy me off? Keep me quiet?" Ashes on ice As kindly as they could, the bu-reaucrats told her that she was overreacting -- and perhaps she was, about Ivan. For whatever his childhood (and he remembers it mostly fondly), he has made a go of life in London ever since he arrived there in 1966 to study architecture. That launched a career leading to three stints (including his current one) with Yorke Rosenberg Mardall (YRM), a distinguished firm whose middle partner, Eugene Rosenberg, is Slovak-born. YRM designed Gatwick Airport in the '50s and has overseen its master plan and expansion since inception. Margolius played a key role in designing the airport's North Terminal and rail stations, a hotel and other buildings. A British as well as a Czech citizen, he remains a Czech patriot: "When I got to England at 19, I saw that people knew nothing about Czechoslovakia. I went to Foyles bookstore and in all its vast collection there was nothing about Czech Cubism or even Czech cars. So I decided to do something as soon as I was launched in my profession." Ten years later, he published his first book: Cubism in Architecture and the Applied Arts. After another decade came award-winning histories of Czech cars: Tatra in 1990, Skoda in 1992. Then, in 1996, the pocket-sized guide Prague: 20th-Century Architec-ture, which has sold 50,000 copies in French, German and English (the English version is awaiting a third edition and a proper index). Also: two Phaidon Press art books involving Joze Plecnik's shiplike church in Prague's namesti Jiriho z Podebrad. And a labor of love: Automobiles by Architects (2000). Margolius himself drives a Skoda but will soon switch to a 1949 Tatraplan 600 that is being restored for him near Podebrady. As for his mother, she has a different automotive tale to tell: It took Heda 20 years to learn the fate of Rudolf Margolius' ashes. The secret-police car taking away the cremated remains of all 11 men hanged in the Slansky case skidded on an icy road, so the agents got out of the car and scattered the ashes to free its wheels.
Alan Levy's e-mail address is
alevy@praguepost.com
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