The remarkable story of Zdenka Fantlov&#225

Over the years, I have visited many Holocaust memorials and museums and I have even been to both a detention camp and a concentration camp but, until this week, I had never actually heard and met a Holocaust survivor. My wife (who is half Czech) and I went along to the Czech Embassy in London for a meeting organised by the British Czech and Slovak Association where we heard the incredibly fluent and moving story of the Czech Holocaust survivor Zdenka Fantlov&#225 who is now well into her 80s (although he does not look it) and lives in London.
Her biography was published in Czech in 1996 and in German in 1997. In 2001, it was published in the USA as “My Lucky Star”. At the Czech Embassy, I was able to purchase a copy of “My Lucky Star” and have it autographed by Zdenka Fantlov&#225. The book is dedicated to the British soldier who saved her life in 1945 and she told me that she would love to have the book published in a British edition. She has the text on a disc, so technically a new edition would be an easy matter. If you have any suggestions as to how this could be done, please e-mail me.
Meanwhile – in brief – this is her story ….


Zdenka was born and brought up in a Jewish family in pre-war Czechoslovakia. After the German occupation of 1938, she was forced to leave her high school because she was Jewish. She heard a song that she really loved the sound of – “You are my lucky star” sung by Fred Astaire in the film “Broadway Melody of 1940” – and so she decided to learn English at lessons at the British Council even though she had no opportunity to use the language. At the age of 19, she was sent to the detention camp of Theresienstadt – Terezin in Czech – where I once spent a day visiting the prison, the museum and various memorials. Before the war, this was a town of 5,000; at the peak of its use by the Nazis, it contained 60,000 prisoners.
This was a German ‘show camp’ where the Jews were allowed and even encouraged to make use of the incredible cultural talents of the inmates. Poetry, plays, music, lectures all took place. Zdenka herself originally worked in the kitchens, but was approached by a fellow inmate looking for someone who could play a support role in a forthcoming play. “Can you cry?” she was asked. She told us the stories of the writing and performance of an allegorical play called “The Last Cyclist” (where cyclists were in effect the Jews) and the drafting but non-performance there of an opera called “The Empress of Atlantis”.
Over time, more and more of the occupants of Theresienstadt were taken to the east, never to be seen again. Around 80,000 Czech Jews perished in the Holocaust, including all of Zdenka’s family (father, mother, brother, sister) and her fianc&#233. Eventually she too was transported to Poland, first to Auschwitz – which I have also visited – and then to the hard labour camp in Kurzbach. She was forced to walk nearly 300 miles on a death march to the Gross Rosen camp. After a short time in Mauthausen, she finished up at Bergen-Belsen where she came “as close to death as it is possible to be”. Her life was saved by a British soldier when she used her English to plead with him not to return her to the barracks of the camp. She never saw the soldier again and she never knew his name. As she told us this, she was in tears.
At the time of her release from Bergen-Belsen, Zdenka weighed a mere 35 kilos. She was sent to Sweden for recuperation under the care of the International Red Cross. In 1949, she emigrated to Australia where she married, had a daughter and became a successful actress. In 1969, she moved to London where she still lives. She frequently lectures on her experiences, especially in Germany. She told us of a recent talk to secondary school students in Germany when one young man asked her: “After 60 years, can’t we stop talking about the Holocaust?” She explained to him – and to us – why we cannot.
In another recent speech, she told her audience something which, in other words, she said to us: “I sort of feel that we have a blueprint, we work on a blueprint. Maybe we think we have free will – maybe we have. But somehow I feel it is like skiing slalom from stick to stick and you decide I’m not going to do this stick. But it doesn’t matter. You have the start, you have the finish. And that’s fate. And nobody will talk me out of it.”
You can read the two-part text of an interview with Zdenka Fantlov&#225 here and here.

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