Details

The Tin Ring looks at the Holocaust through the eyes of survivor Zdenka Fantlova. On 13 June 1942 at Terezin concentration camp, Zdenka and her lover Arno shared a risky farewell meeting. Arno gave Zdenka a hand-made tin ring, with the engraving ?Arno 13.6.1942'. Then, like so many others, he was ordered into a cattle truck destined for the unknown. They never met again. The three years that followed those last moments with Arno saw Zdenka stand at the doors of Auschwitz's gas chambers, march 450 kilometres through the snow without food and travel in goods trains crammed with prisoners, for days at a time, next to the corpses of those who had suffocated. Stripped of her freedom, clothes, possessions, and even the hair from her head, upon her arrival at the infamous Auschwitz, Zdenka risked her life to conceal the tin ring from her torturers. A symbol of his love for her and his desire for them to meet again and marry after the war, Zdenka still has the ring today, seventy years on. Zdenka's unrelenting spirit and the tin ring, which became her source of hope and truth, sustained her until she was liberated from Belsen, weighing just 77 pounds, unable to stand and suffering from Typhus. She dedicated her book, The Tin Ring, to an unknown soldier of the British Army who, in April 1945, broke military instructions to ensure her evacuation from the camp and ultimately save her life.

Creatives/Company

Adapted by(s): Mike Alfreds, Jane Arnfield