Zdenka Fantlova (1922–2022)

The title of this Holocaust memoir derives from a makeshift engagement ring the author was given by her boyfriend Arno before their final separation at the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp in 1942. She kept the ring as a symbol of hope, managing to retain it through her stripping and deprivation of her possessions when deported to Auschwitz. Fantlova was a survivor - she was one of only 17 survivors of a transport of 1000 women who, spared from the gas chambers at Auschwitz, were ordered to dig trenches against the advancing Russians. Later they were sent on one of the notorious death marches in early 1945, driven forward away from the advancing Allied forces, the Russians from the East and the British from the West. Zdenka ended up in Bergen Belsen in a terrible typhus epidemic which killed most of the remaining prisoners, including her sister and remaining friends (and, unknown to her, Anne and Margot Frank). Rescued by the British, and discovering that not only Arno, but her own, father, step-mother and brother had died, she took the chance to move to Sweden to start to rebuild her life. Later in life she moved to Australia, then to Britain.

Despite this unimaginably tragic period in her life, the early chapters of this book are told in a very matter of fact way. She emphasises that her childhood was quite ordinary and happy, albeit punctuated by the tragic death of her mother when she was just three and half year old, then her father's reluctant remarriage to a step-mother, who she felt was more like a governess than a mother. Even the gradual encroachment of the Nazi menace in the late 1930s, even after their invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, did not seem real to her as long as she and her family were able to stay together in their home, a situation which lasted until the beginning of 1942 when they were deported to Terezin (her father had been arrested just before this).

One other striking feature of this remarkable account is the rich cultural life that the prisoners managed to make for themselves in Terezin, staging plays, using the talents of many of the artistic people among their number, even including some biting and humorous satires on the Nazis. These productions eventually petered out as increasing numbers of the prisoners were deported to Auschwitz, but remain a memorable testament to the strength of the human spirit under adversity.… (más)