Searching for the angel of Belsen

Suffering from typhus and in the last throes of life, Zdenka Fantlova dragged her skeletal frame out of her concrete block in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and crawled along a corridor to the Red Cross post. Unable to move any farther, Fantlova 23, a Czechoslovak Jew who weighed just 77lb (34kg), collapsed in a heap behind the door and prayed that she was safe

A few hours later, she heard the sound of footsteps and a British army officer walked through the door, switched the light on and found her

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I’m sorry. You have to go back to your block. When your turn comes we will evacuate you.”

But Fantlova pleaded: “If I go back, I will die. If you leave me here, you will save at least one human life. But if it is against your orders, then I don’t want to be in your way. Please shoot me right here. It will be quicker.”

It was that exchange on the night of April 29, 1945 — two weeks after the British Army had arrived at the camp in northwestern Germany — that saved Fantlova’s life. Inspired by her cousin Bedrich, who had played her the Fred Astaire song You are My Lucky Star, she had learnt to speak English in Czechoslovakia before the Second World War

She recalls the officer standing over her, “like in a film, listening”

“Suddenly his face changed. It was as though the military mask had crumbled and underneath was a human face. He wasn’t much older than me. He looked at me and said, ‘All right, you stay here. I will come back in the morning to pick you up’. ”

My last words to him were: “Do you have any water?” He brought me a jug with clean water. It was the cleanest water I had seen for years and tasted like champagne. I drank every drop. He switched off the light, closed the door and left.”

The following morning, the officer, whom she assumed was a medic, returned

“All of a sudden I heard the noise of a military ambulance being backed to the door. I looked inside and there were four stretchers

“Then the officer did something that was probably against the military rules. He brought out another stretcher, stripped off the evening dress that I had been given at Auschwitz and had been wearing for six months and was crawling with lice and insects, kicked it into the corner of the room, wrapped me up in a sheet, put me on the stretcher and put me into the ambulance

“I twisted round my head and saw Belsen retreating into the distance and I felt the biggest victor in the world. But when we arrived at the hospital in Bergen, the ambulance stopped, the door opened and somebody else took me out. My saviour vanished. I never saw him again.”

She had not had a chance to thank him or to find out his name

Now, as the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp by British troops is marked, Fantlova is appealing for help to track down the man who saved her life. She believes he is either a member of the British medical corps or a medical student volunteer, one of 100 who arrived at Belsen in the aftermath of its liberation

She has written a biography, The Tin Ring, about her experiences during the Holocaust — she is the only Jew from her home town of Rokycany, 50 miles (80 km) from Prague, to survive the war — and has dedicated it to “an unknown member of the British Army who, through his humanity, saved my life in Bergen-Belsen in April 1945”

“He must have been an angel,” she says. “I have always thought God bless the country that sent him. If I never find him, he will never know how grateful I will be to him for the rest of my life.”

Although she has just turned 88, Fantlova’s appearance belies her age and the experiences she endured during the war. She does not drink or smoke, goes to the gym regularly and travels around the world, educating students about the war. “The Holocaust was not a natural disaster,” she says. “It was caused by people and people never change. If it happened once, it could happen again.”

Two years ago, on the anniversary of the liberation, she met the Queen at St James’s Palace. “She asked me if I was one of the survivors. She was even smaller than me with lovely kind blue eyes — and I told her my story.”

Born on March 28, 1922, the youngest of two children of Arnost Fantl and his wife Betty, Fantlova was just three years old when her mother died from blood poisoning. Her brother, Jiricek, was 6. Within a year her father, an iron broker, married her stepmother Ella. A halfsister Lydia followed

After being expelled from school at 17 for being Jewish, Fantlova decided to go to the Prague Institute to learn English, a decision that later enabled her to communicate with the British soldier

Her father was not so fortunate. He was arrested in 1939 after an informant told the Gestapo he had listened to a forbidden BBC broadcast and Fantlova never saw him again. He was taken to Buchenwald in Germany, then sentenced to 12 years in a prison for political offenders in Bayreuth, Bavaria, but died on a death march to Auschwitz in Poland

After her father’s arrest, Fantlova fell in love with a Jewish refugee named Arno, who was five years older. But the relationship was doomed. On January 16, 1942, Arno and his family were transported to Terezin, a ghetto for more than 150,000 Jews, northwest of Prague. Four days later Fantlova, her brother, half-sister and stepmother followed

The couple was reunited briefly after Fantlova heard Arno whistling their signature tune, Dvorak’s New World Symphony, but their happiness was short-lived. On June 13, after pledging his love to her with a tin ring — hence the name of her autobiography — he and his family were transported to Trawniky in Poland. After the war she learnt that he had been killed on arrival

Fantlova remained at Terezin for another two years with the rest of her family, determined to survive the war and be reunited with her father and her beloved Arno. But in September 1944 Jiricek was transported to Auschwitz. She later found out that he had been sent to Gliwice to build a rocket munitions factory but had been shot after making an attempt to escape The following month, she, her stepmother and Lydia were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where about a million Jews lost their lives during the war

As they descended from the train, an SS guard divided them into two groups — her stepmother was sent to the left to the gas chambers. Fantlova and Lydia were ordered to the right. Their heads were shaved and their few possessions confiscated. In a brave move, Fantlova put her tin ring under her tongue and the guard was called away before searching her. It remains with her to this day

“I had taken everything off except that ring,” she recalls. “I had no wish to part from it. It meant everything to me. I thought, ‘If I throw it away, I lose the ground beneath my feet and I let Arno down. But if not, I could lose my life. It was Russian roulette’

“I made a decision. I would not part from the ring. I would keep it come what may. I put it under my tongue and then fate intervened. The guard was rummaging in my hair when a higher rank walked in and told him to hurry up. I felt as if my life had been saved.”

She and Lydia remained in the camp for a couple of months before being among 1,000 women sent east to Kurzback, near Breslau, Upper Silesia, to dig trenches. During this time she discovered that Lydia was pregnant, a fact that they concealed from their guards

But on December 21, 1944, the group was ordered to march 450km eastwards towards Gross Rosen concentration camp. Two weeks later they arrived. Four hundred women had died en route. But after spending a week at Gross Rosen, they were transported by train to Mauthausen in Austria. They were then transferred by train to Belsen

By the time the Belsen camp was liberated, only 17 of the 1,000 women had survived. Lydia died just days before liberaton aged 17, having suffered a miscarriage

“The camp resembled a mortuary,” Fantlova recalls. “The population of Bergen-Belsen was about 60,000 inmates. There were 15,000 corpses scattered around. There was no food. There was no water and there was a typhus epidemic. Nobody looked after anybody. You were left alone to die

“The dead were lying in heaps like rubbish, outside under the birch trees — there was such a beautiful birch forest. Those in the blocks, which were overcrowded, were lying on a concrete floor. Half of them were dead and half of them looked dead but were still breathing

“As a survivor, you have three enemies through the whole period, cold, hunger and thirst. One can overcome cold — somehow it’s not all the time — you can put your hands in your armpits, like central heating, or move around or huddle together. Food one can also live without. Even only talking about food is a substitute. But water is life and the brain can’t keep going without water

“Your brain does everything possible to keep you alive and eliminate activities that are not essential for survival. It eliminates emotions, which are a drain on energy and are not essential for survival. You don’t feel sadness; there are no tears; there is no laughter; there is no fear; there is no hope. You just stop caring

“Suddenly I had an urge to get out of that block. I was just skin and bones. I couldn’t even stand. I couldn’t even sit up. But I crawled out over all those dead bodies, out of the barrack. To this day I don’t know how I did it. I remember it was very slippery, yellow clay with puddles, which I lapped up like a dog. I crawled to the light and there was a station of the Red Cross. I crawled behind the door, sat down and felt safe. I felt that I had escaped the Grim Reaper.”

After the war Fantlova was sent to Sweden, where she worked in a biscuit factory before landing a job in the Czech Embassy

She emigrated to Australia, where she met her husband, Charles Erhlich, a German Jew, whose grandfather Paul Erhlich, won a Nobel prize for inventing a cure for syphilis

He had emigrated to England in 1939 with his brother Günther but was sent to Australia on the Dunera, a passenger liner, which left Liverpool on July 10, 1940, with 2,542 men classed as enemy aliens, most of whom were Jewish refugees. His brother was sent to Canada

The couple married in September 1950 and had a daughter, Kate, who lives in America. Fantlova became an actress. The couple moved to London in 1969 and Charles died 30 years later. Want more information regarding head lice ?

She says: “When I was in the camps, I was fighting for my life like a madman because I wanted to survive and be back with my family and Arno. The ring became a symbol of love and hope. When I learnt that everybody had died, I began to wonder what am I doing here? I felt that I had no reason to live. But life went on.”

Yet Fantlova does not want revenge: “Justice belongs to God,” she says. “I’ve had a lot of narrow escapes, where I have learnt what matters: your life, your relationships, your health. That’s about it. The rest is not important. That’s why I have peace.”

The Tin Ring is published by Northumbria Press and costs £15