The novel by Hanna Demetz (1928 Ústí nad Labem - 1993 Bethlehem USA), the first wife of the well-known Germanist and bohemian Peter Demetz, is set in occupied Bohemia. Its heroine, Helenka, perceives the threat that begins to surround her at first only in a sort of offhand way, against the background of her own childhood and adolescent problems. But gradually she has to watch as her loved ones, her mother, a Czech Jewess, her father, a Sudeten German, their siblings and relatives, and her first love, a German soldier, are mercilessly sorted by the times into hostile camps and figuratively and literally destroyed. From this (largely autobiographical) perspective, the author of the book manages to outline, in urgent shorthand, a number of issues related to the Jewish fate and the end of a thousand years of coexistence of three cultures in the Czech lands.
Czech edition