What are the motifs in Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968 by Heda Margolius Kovaly?

By any measure the book contains a vast amount of politics and political commentary. This is unavoidable to some degree, as the author directly participated in many of the seminal events of modern history. The author lives through the Nazi occupation, through genocide and the holocaust, and on to Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia. Even so, the author's younger years of survival through the Nazi holocaust appear to have been fairly apolitical. Her world-view appears to have been, quite understandably, forged in the inferno of Lodz and Auschwitz, and extends beyond the mere accumulation of wealth or the exercise of power for power's sake. Indeed, the author and her first husband, Rudolf Margolius, become involved in Communist politics precisely because it was idealistic and Utopian.