The Prague Post Online: Tempo: Actress lives on in Holocaust diary

October 12th, 2008

Endowment Fund Business Listings ONLINE Reservations Classifieds Subscriptions

Hotel Prague Centre

Prague Real Estate

Actress lives on in Holocaust diary

A personal look at a great Czech personality, Hana Pravda, through the eyes of her niece

July 2nd, 2008 issue

By Eva Munková

COURTESY PHOTO

Eva Munková as a child with her "Teta Hana" on a family vacation. Hana Pravdová was a movie and TV actress who published two books about her life during World War II.

The PravdovÁ file

Born Jan. 29, 1916, in Prague
Married Alexander "Saša" Munk, 1939; widowed, 1945
Imprisoned December 1942 in Terezín
Transported with Saša to Auschwitz Oct. 1, 1944, from where she was sent on to Birnbäumel
Married Jiří (later George) Pravda, 1946; widowed, 1985
Son Alexander Pravda, 54, four grandchildren

For the Post

I met my aunt, Teta Hana, for the first time when I was on a trip through Spain with my parents, and I was immediately charmed.

Not because she was nice to me — few adults could resist a plump, gap-toothed, 7-year-old — but because she immediately hit it off with my companion, Liška Bystrouška, a fox.

Not only did Teta Hana find the small, bedraggled hand puppet “very, very smart,” she actually made her talk. The moment her small hand slipped inside the toy, Liška Bystrouška developed opinions, a sense of humor and an entire range of emotions, including coyness, greed and even intense shyness, which I could completely identify with.

They told me Teta Hana was an actress, and that she had once played in the National Theater in Prague. I found that mildly interesting, but I did not see what it had to do with her making Liška Bystrouška talk.

One hot summer day, in the Alhambra, while my parents dashed around snapping photos like crazed terriers, Teta Hana and I settled down in the cool shade of the Lion’s Court. She adamantly refused to help me build a complicated system of gravel fortifications, but instead told me a fascinating story involving a Moorish princess about my age, an evil vizier and a “very good” lion — the same one, in fact, that sat on his haunches next to us now.

Lions, she told me, were very brave and loyal — almost as much so as dogs. She once had a terrier, Zuzanka, but she had been forced to go away (she didn’t say why), so she left the dog with a neighbor.

When Teta Hana returned, after four years, the lady didn’t want to give Zuzanka back! She told Teta Hana her dog had forgotten her. But Teta Hana insisted on letting Zuzanka make her own decision. Of course the dog remembered her, and howled for joy and crawled to her on her belly when she saw her.

Teta Hana told me I must never beat or scold my dog.

“A dog’s only purpose in life is to please you. When he is bad, it’s because he didn’t understand what you wanted from him. If you tell him very clearly and sensibly what you expect of him, he will do it, and you don‘t need to scold him.”

She didn’t add that this tactic works just as well for most 7-year-olds, and even for some adults.

“Generally,” she told me, “at all levels, you find perfectly normal people, and if you tell them very sensibly and clearly …”

This was her creed, which was sort of ironic, considering. I guess the key word was “generally.”

She had a knack for putting things into perspective, and I took her words for gospel — generally.

Once, I confided to her that I was terribly afraid of ghosts.

“I’m not,” she said. “Ghosts were once perfectly normal people — why should they want to hurt us? I only wish I could meet a ghost. Wouldn’t that be lovely, if the people who died could come back for a chat from time to time?”

Unaware of the long list of ghosts she wished she could chat with, I told her I thought that was a poor idea indeed.

But now, as my own list grows longer, I realize that, regarding ghosts, as well as other issues, Teta Hana was right.

Hana Pravdová, a talented actress, author and director died May 22 at the age of 92.

She was born in Prague in 1916. Her father, Josef Beck, was a Czech Legionnaire and the co-founder of the Legiobanka — today the ČSOB on Na Poříčí street. Hana had an enchanted childhood: annual trips to Paris, where she spoke nothing but French with her mother, Beatrix; the seaside in summer and the mountains in winter.

Her childhood came to an end in June 1932, when her mother died of leukemia. Hana was 16. To assuage her grief, she cut school to sit on her mother’s graveside and read War and Peace. Until the end of her life, this was her favorite book.

Josef Beck saw that the only love of his dreamy, grief-stricken child seemed to be the theater and, despite his initial misgivings, he arranged for her to take private acting lessons with the famous Czech actress Olga Scheinpflugova. She got her first film role in 1934 and became a member of the Olomouc Theater Company in 1935.

In 1936, she met Alexander Munk — “Saša,” the son of a prominent Prague lawyer, Julius Munk, at a student political rally. It was love at first sight, a true “coup de foudre,” she called it in her memoirs. She spent 1937 studying theater in Leningrad. In 1938, she joined the theater in Kladno and often played in Prague, including at the National Theater.

That year, Hana found out she was a Jew. Even though her family had never adhered to the faith, according to the Nazis’ infamous Nurnberg Decrees, she was Jewish.

Not a safe haven

Five months before World War II broke out, Hana and Saša married and moved to the “safe haven” of Potštejn, a small town in east Bohemia. They thought they were safe, but in December 1942, they were transported to the Terezín concentration camp. In October 1944, Saša was chosen for transport to Auschwitz.

Hana chose to join him.

They were separated immediately upon arrival. Hana did heavy labor at the Birnbäumel work camp until January 1945. As the end of the war, and the Russian tanks, approached, in temperatures of –10 Celsius, the women had to dig a huge trench across the Polish steppe.

“It was about 3 meters deep, with water at the bottom, and our SS men thought it highly amusing to push us into the water as we dug,” she wrote in her memoirs.

On Jan. 21, 1945, 900 women were forced on a death march to the gas chambers of Bergen Belsen. Those who couldn’t keep up were shot. Hana escaped with a friend Jan. 29.

“We waited for a moment when nobody was paying attention, and we simply walked away,” she told me. “If you ever need to run away, do it slowly.”

As springtime crept over the land, and she headed home by foot, train and horse-drawn cart, Hana kept a diary to give to Saša when they were reunited.

Sole survivor

But, in Prague, she found out that Saša Munk had died April 20, 1945. No one from her family returned from the camps except her cousin, Milan Platovský and her father-in-law.

In the last entry of her diary, Nov. 30, 1945, she wrote: “My dearest. My beloved. Ask God to forgive me. Pray for my soul — the soul I am losing. I don’t want to live with a shattered soul. Please help me to die.”

She did not do it.

She returned to the theater. In 1946, as Hana Alexandrová, she joined Realistické divadlo, where Jiří Pravda, a fellow actor, helped her overcome her despair.

“Jirka [was] the best actor and the kindest man in the world, full of love and understanding — he saved my life,” she wrote in her memoirs.

They married and, in 1948, with a 1-year-old son, Alexander, they emigrated to Hana’s beloved Paris. Unable to get a work permit, they moved on to Melbourne, Australia. For seven years, they lived from the proceeds of a small pottery studio. They also founded a volunteer theater company called Tana, the aborigine word for “happiness.”

In 1956, the grande dame of English theater, Dame Sybil Thorndyke, saw Hana’s production of the play Of Mice and Men and persuaded them to come to London.

Jirka, alias George Pravda, got engagements in prestigious theaters such as the Old Vic, and played alongside Laurence Olivier, among others. Hana “Maria” Pravda appeared in many films, including The Kremlin Letter, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. She directed several theater productions in London’s smaller theaters and was well known as Emma Cohen in The Survivors TV series.

She and Jirka lived in a three-story townhouse on Earl’s Court Square, packed floor to high, stuccoed ceilings full of books, souvenirs, and their own paintings. Both were creative — when they were not acting, they were painting or writing.

They were in love for 39 years.

“Make sure the man you choose loves you for all the small annoying things about you — not for your assets,” Hana once told me.

Jirka died in 1985, at the age of 68.

Hana’s heart-rending, wartime diary disappeared for 50 years. It surfaced in an old jewel case in her neighbor’s attic in Melbourne. In 1999, Hana published it in Prague in a book of her and Jirka’s memoirs, Krátke povídky z dlouhého života (Short Stories from a Long Life), and, a year later in London, published I Was Writing This Diary For You, Sasha (Day Books, 2000).

After the Velvet Revolution, she returned to Prague almost every year.

Hana and Jirka’s son, Alex Pravda, is the director of the Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies at St. Anthony’s College in Oxford.

To her grandmother’s great joy, one of her beloved grandchildren, Isabela, became an actress.

Eva Munková can be reached at features@praguepost.com

Be the first to add a comment!

Most e-mailed articles
Klaus takes views on U.S. tour Bohemian center reopens in NYC Preventing panic

Related articles
Acting up

Most visited in Business Listings

The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.