Convictions: My Life With A Good Communist

 

A re-release of a book first published in 1979, Convictions details Jo Langer’s incredible story of survival in 1950s Communist Czechoslovakia. Langer and her husband Oscar escaped to America during the Second World War, later returning to Czechoslovakia to help build communism. She worked for state exports in Bratislava, while he was a respected economist for the Central Committee. In 1951 Oscar Langer was arrested and detained as part of the anti-semitic purge of the Communist Party that culminated in the infamous Slánský trials. Following anti-Semitic abuse, threats against his family, beatings and solitary confinement, he eventually submitted and was imprisoned. Jo Langer lost her job and was exiled to the countryside, where she fought courageously to piece her life back together. In this impassioned, brutal testimony, she describes trying to protect her two daughters, as she survives the loss of her husband, as well as the loss of her place in society and her faith in communism. Langer’s writing is heartfelt, fiercely intelligent and witty, and it, importantly, manages to completely avoid sensationalism. Convictions is important as a declaration of the terrible costs of political regression, detailing the incredible human capacity to survive the inhuman. An unquestionable classic. [Rebecca Isherwood]