Young UJIA Educational Event with Holocaust Survivor Zdenka Fantlova (sold out)

Young UJIA invites you to hear the moving story of Holocaust survivor Zdenka Fantlova

This event is now fully booked
Due to security reasons if you have not already reserved your place, you will not be able to attend. We apologise for any disappointment and hope to see you at the next Young UJIA event.

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Zdenka Fantlova's childhood in pre-war Czechoslovakia was a peaceful though not an uneventful one that revolved around her family, her friends and of course, boys. Her life seemed mapped out when she met Arno, her soulmate, but the German invasion of her country intervened and Zdenka's life was forced down an horrific and unexpected path. Sent by the Nazis to the ghetto of Terezin outside Prague, Arno presented his girlfriend with a small token of his love, a ring made from tin. Soon his life journey diverged from hers - a journey from which he was destined not to return.

Zdenka was transported from Terezin to the extermination camp at Auschwitz and afterwards to hard labour in Kurzbach. The people she met, the horrors she experienced and fight for survival as a young woman of nineteen are movingly described. Her life still revolved around her family, her friends and her longing to be with Arno, whose ring she risked death to keep with her. In January 1945 she was forced to walk nearly 300 miles on a death march to the Gross Rosen camp and then to the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. With the war coming to an end the conditions in the camps became more chaotic and deadly. In the last days before liberation Belsen, with no food or water, became hell on earth and, Zdenka, in one last grasp at survival, forced herself into the hospital wing and begged for help from a British army officer. Zdenka says his humanity, saved her life.