Dita Saxová

Dita Saxová is the only one in her family to have survived the concentration camp. Two years have passed since the War and she now lives, together with young women in similar circumstances, at the Young Women's Home organized by the Jewish religious community in Prague. Lawyer comes to see Dita, at whom her uncle, a dental technician, hid his gold foils before the War. He hands over only half of them, and keeps the rest as the payment for the "dangers" he had endured. Dita spends a small fortune on a precious bracelet she buys for herself, and, at her eighteenth birthday party, presents her friends Líza, Britta and Tonička with the remaining gold foils. Beautiful Dita has three suitors. She gives no hope to the madly enamoured Fici and refuses to go to San Salvador with the rich Herbert. She thinks that she has found true love in David Egon and loses her virginity with him at a pension outside Prague. However, the youth is merely a superficial fop and the sensitive girl is deeply hurt to find that he boasts about his success as if she were prey. Dita is deserted by her friends. Líza enters into a loveless marriage with a rich lawyer, Britta goes to England and the fragile, dainty and illness-prone Tonička dies. Dita manages to go to Switzerland. She celebrates her nineteenth birthday at an émigré party organized by the affluent Werli family. The two sons of the hosts court her. Emotionally deprived, Dita feels herself to be nothing but a beautiful object. Next morning she goes in the icily cold mountains, to look for her death. (Verleiher-Text)