Ostracism

The author, a Jew, spends most of her adult life ostracized from society. This forcible separation takes many forms in the novel. First, the author and her natal family are separated into the Lodz ghetto; they are then deported to Auschwitz where they are all murdered, except the author. The author subsequently escapes from Nazi imprisonment and returns to her non-Jewish friends living in her hometown of Prague. There, she is stunned to discover that nearly without exception they do not want to associate with her and are afraid of being known to have seen her. Their fear of social reprisal is so great that they drive her from their homes. She manages to survive by obtaining shelter from local partisans until the end of the war. She then begins a period of a few years of belonging, but notes that anti-Semitism was still prevalent throughout Czechoslovakian society...