Margolius recalls his father and the processes of the 1950s

Prague - The family history of Rudolf Margolius, a former deputy foreign minister executed in 1952 during the Slánský trial, is detailed in a book by his son Ivan Margolius. The book titled "Prague in the Mirror" is published by Argo just these days.
Sixty-year-old Ivan Margolius is originally an architect by profession. He completed his studies started at the Czech Technical University in Prague in England, where he has lived since 1966. Half a century after his father's death, he decided to search within himself, in the memories of relatives, in family and official documents, and to create a portrait of an innocently executed man, capture the history of his family, uncover his own roots, and find out how much the family history reflects in his own life.
The backdrop of his search in the book "Prague in the Mirror" is the history of Europe in the 20th century, especially two periods that affected his family the hardest - the Holocaust and the 1950s with its politically supported anti-Semitism and political trials.
Ivan Margolius began writing in an effort to raise awareness abroad about Prague and the Czech Republic. He is also the author of a guide to modern architecture in Prague titled "Prague - a guide to twentieth century architecture", a portrait of designer Hans Ledwinka titled "Tatra - The Legacy of Hans Ledwinka," and co-authored a book with architect Jan Kaplický titled "Czech Inspiration = Česká inspirace."
During the political trials in Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1989, more than a quarter of a million people were sentenced to several years in prison, of which 241 people were executed. Besides the trial of Milada Horáková, who was sentenced to death as the only woman, the trial of "the anti-state conspiratorial center of Rudolf Slánský" from 1952 is also well-known.
This trial differed from previous ones, in which members of non-communist parties, clergymen, businessmen, and members of foreign units fighting in World War II in the West were judged as regime opponents, as it involved 14 high-ranking officials of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia standing before the court.
All 14 former officials were found guilty of treason, espionage, and sabotage and were sentenced to the highest penalties. Only three of them received life sentences, while the other 11 faced the gallows, among the executed were, besides Rudolf Slánský, foreign minister Vladimír Clementis, deputy minister of national defense Bedřich Reicin, journalist André Simone, and deputy minister of foreign trade Rudolf Margolius. Their bodies were cremated and the ashes scattered at unknown locations around Prague.
Among the three who escaped with life sentences was deputy foreign minister Artur London, who, thanks to his wife, a French citizen, managed to get out of prison after four years and described the trial in his well-known book "Confessions." All those sentenced in this trial were legally and civilly rehabilitated, most of them in 1963.