Czech actor who described her experiences in surviving several Nazi camps during the Holocaust in her book The Tin Ring
Zdenka Fantlová in 1946. ‘We were quite ignorant of what was in store for us, only the Germans knew,’ she said.Zdenka Fantlová in 1946. ‘We were quite ignorant of what was in store for us, only the Germans knew,’ she said.
Zdenka worked in the kitchen, alongside the future conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Karel Ančerl. She was in cabarets written by the satirist Karel Švenk and a play called Esther – designed by František Zelenka, from the National Theatre in Prague. After a rehearsal, the pianist and composer Gideon Klein played for her. “He went up to the stage and in the semi-darkness he played Chopin’s C minor Etude. I thought this man is playing just for me.
On a visit to Prague as a teenager, Zdenka heard a gramophone recording of You Are My Lucky Star, a song from the musical Broadway Melody of 1936. “As I listened to that song,” she said, “I knew I had to learn English, come what may.” She spent a year at the English Institute in Prague, which would ultimately save her life.
Zdenka’s sister died of typhus in Belsen and Zdenka nearly died too. After the camp was liberated in April 1945 she just managed to find the energy to crawl to a British medical post and – in the English she had learned thanks to You Are My Lucky Star – begged for a drink of water. The soldier demanded she go back to her hut, but she refused, saying it was better for him to shoot her there. So he organised to get her out.
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