As a Czech intellectual, and a Jewess, Heda Margolius suffered first under the Nazis and later under Communism; most of her family died under Hitler, and she herself barely survived by escaping from Auschwitz. With the Communist takeover in 1948 there were the usual hopes of a new life for all, but Stalinism soon closed in and her husband, a civil servant, was convicted in a show trial and executed. Left with a small child, she was shunned by the majority of her fellow citizens and though the skies lightened a little under Khrushchev, the same faceless people remained in power. Even in the 1960s, efforts to rehabilitate her dead husband with only faint and grudging success, and when Dubcek's bid for modified independence failed in 1968, and Russian troops occupied her country, she finally took a train across the frontier to the West. A note on the jacket tells us that she went to America and worked as a librarian there, but returned to Prague last year. Her book is simply told and has relatively few literary qualities, but it is genuinely moving as a case history in a nightmare time.