The Heavy Burden of Survivor’s Guilt: A Review of Alena Mornštajnová’s Hana (2020, Parthian Books)
The cover of the Czech edition of Alena Mornštajnová’s Hana (published in 2017) features a single illustrated věneček, a classic Czech pastry found in most sweet shops. It is a delicate wreath-shaped profiterole with piped vanilla custard in the middle, all topped with icing that gives the dessert its glossy finish. It usually brings delight – as it has for me throughout my life – but in Hana, the joy-giving dessert is actually a harbinger of death.
Hana, translated into English by Julia and Peter Sherwood, consists of three parts. Each one is set in a different time period with alternating narrators. In the first part, “I, Mira: 1954–1963”, we meet seven-year-old, self-proclaimed disobedient child, Mira Karásková. Her family is celebrating her mother’s 30th birthday with věnečky. Mira, however, does not receive one as a punishment for disobeying her mother. Soon after, Mira’s family falls ill, as does the rest of the town of Meziříčí. It turns out that the desserts served at her mother’s celebration, and all the goods from the town’s bakery, were made with contaminated water. Thus the town plunges into a typhoid epidemic and Mira’s family succumbs to the disease, leaving her orphaned. Mira is all alone in the world, save for her strange aunt Hana, who survives typhoid and takes her in.
Mira’s narrative focuses on her fascination with her aunt Hana’s odd behavior. Hana is described as a ghostlike figure; she is extremely thin with white hair and is always dressed in a black cardigan and dress, as if in perpetual mourning. She keeps bread hidden in her pockets, under her pillow, and in various drawers throughout the house. She spends most of her day in solitude, prone to “states of silent numbness.”
Actually, I had rarely heard her say anything at all, because Aunt Hana hardly ever spoke, she just stared. In that funny way of hers. As if she were looking but didn’t see. As if she’d gone away and left her body on the chair. Sometimes I worried that she might suddenly slide down to the floor leaving only a pile of black clothes behind.
We, of course, are aware of what Mira does not yet know or understand that Hana is a Holocaust survivor. Mira only learns that her family is Jewish when her best friend tells her that she is not allowed to play with her anymore because Mira is “a Jew,” to which Mira replies that she is “most certainly not.” After all, Mira tells us, she does not know what the word means.
It is not implausible that a young girl growing up in 1950s Czechoslovakia would not know what the word “Jew” means. Anti-Semitism persisted after the war and was characteristic of the Stalinist regime. One is reminded of the Slánský trial, held by the Czechoslovak Communist Party merely a decade after the Holocaust. At the time, fourteen defendants went on trial, eleven of whom were of Jewish descent. Despite being devoted communists, all the defendants were found guilty. The eleven of Jewish descent, which included the party’s General Secretary, Rudolf Slánský, were executed. It is no wonder that any Jews remaining in the country would have kept quiet about their faith and heritage.
The second and third part of Hana centers on the plight of Czechoslovak Jews during the Second World War, which is relayed through the perspectives of Mira’s aunt Hana, her mother, and her maternal grandmother. The narrators also include other non-Jewish members of the town, like Hana’s love interest, Jaroslav Horáček. Switching between characters, Mornštajnová paints a picture of life in Meziříčí before and after the fatal transport. The author’s central questions are not primarily historical in nature. Instead, she focuses on the reasons behind why people stayed – such as love interests and filial duties – and the psychological consequences of those motivations.
Hana and her family end up in Terezín and then Auschwitz. Like Mira a decade later, Hana believes she is the sole survivor in her family. Although she reunites with her sister in Meziříčí after the war, Hana is never able to fully recover. Her trauma is rooted in the guilt she feels for stalling her family’s chance at early escape, and for surviving the camps. She is haunted by her decision and believes she is partly accountable for the fates of her mother and grandparents.
I bring bad luck to those I love and those who love me. I’ve known this for a long time. My mother died because I kept delaying our departure for England. I condemned Leo to death because I couldn’t hold my tongue and named him as the father of my child. In so doing I issued his ticket for Auschwitz. And I couldn’t save our baby son either. People stronger and more determined than me perished in Auschwitz, yet I have survived. But now, all of a sudden, Rosa and her family were dead while I was still alive. Have I really gone on living only to bring misfortune to others?
Much has been written about survivor’s guilt, often by Holocaust survivors who wrote about their experiences as a way to process their trauma. As the descendent of a Jewish grandfather who escaped Carpathian Ruthenia in 1940, I grew up with these stories. To craft her narrative, Mornštajnová, who is not Jewish and does not have any personal ties to the Holocaust, relied on the oral histories of survivors and research into Meziříčí’s Jewish history. Notably, Hana did not start out as a novel about the Holocaust. In an interview with Český rozhlas, Mornštajnová explained, "I didn't want to write about the Holocaust. It all started with the typhus epidemic that took place in Valašské Meziříčí in the 1950s. I knew that my Hana would be strange, but the reason for the otherness did not hatch until writing."
Perhaps because the theme of survivor’s guilt is so familiar to me, I found myself wishing for Hana to express a more diverse spectrum of emotion besides silent suffering. Despite a refreshing moment of anger directed at her former best friend Ivana, Hana remains emotionally stunted and never graduates from her depression. Although Hana's character development may be unsatisfying, it is realistic. She is a prototype for a generation of psychologically wounded people. To this end, Mornštajnová goes to great lengths to detail the complexity of Hana’s trauma.
Nor did my body heal, but I wasn’t tormented so much by the pain caused by every sudden movement, change of weather or burst of excitement, as by surges of anxiety. I saw no reason to keep on living, but I wasn’t able to die either. For a long time Rosa did her best to try and lift me from the void. She didn’t understand that she was doomed to fail because all that was left of me was a husk. My soul, the soul that makes a person into a human being, was no longer there.
Hana does not explore any new themes when it comes to Holocaust literature. (Unfortunately, even the cover of the English language version of Hana does not serve to differentiate the book from the prevailing aesethics of Holocaust literature; it is the familiar image of the yellow Star of David sewn onto a striped concentration camp uniform.) However, as Mornštajnová states, her aim was never to write a piece of Holocaust literature. Rather, she was searching for a vehicle through which to portray a particular kind of strangeness. Ultimately, the book’s success lies in the parallel storylines of Mira and Hana. Mornštajnová shows how two tragedies, separated by a decade, can produce the same psychological effects in both individuals. Despite both Mira and Hana experiencing survivor’s guilt, they end up being the key to the other person’s healing. Mira finds company even in Hana’s quiet existence, while caring for Mira gives Hana a renewed purpose. Mornštajnová suggests that while trauma cannot be erased, time and the creation of meaningful connections can be our greatest healers.
Anna West writes about culture and history for English-language publications, focusing on issues relating to the Czech Republic and Central Europe. She grew up in Los Angeles in a Czech-American family and speaks Czech fluently.