After the communist coup d'état of 1948 Zenkl was under constant surveillance by the communist State Security apparatus. He managed, however, to escape with his wife to the West in August 1948. In subsequent years he became the head of the Czechoslovak political exile movement. In 1949-1974 he was a chairman of the exile Council of Free Czechoslovakia, based in Washington, D.C.. After the fall of communism in 1989, his remains were transferred from the United States to the Vyšehrad Cemetery in Prague. In October 1991 he was awarded, "in memoriam", the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, II class, by President Václav Havel.