Lidice
Encyclopedia
Lidice is a village in the Czech Republic
just northwest of Prague
. It is built on the site of a previous village of the same name which, as part of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
, was on orders from Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler
, completely destroyed by German forces in reprisal for the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich
in the late spring of 1942. On June 10, 1942, all 173 men over 16 years of age from the village were murdered
. Another 11 men who were not in the village were arrested and murdered soon afterwards along with several others already under arrest. Several hundred women and over 100 children were deported to concentration camps; a few children considered racially suitable for Germanisation were handed over to SS families and the rest were sent to the Chełmno extermination camp where they were gassed to death. After the war ended, only 153 women and 17 children returned.
and Slaný
.
and General of Police Reinhard Heydrich
had been Acting Reichsprotektor of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
. This area of the former Czechoslovakia had been occupied by Nazi Germany since April 5, 1939.
On the morning of May 27, 1942, Heydrich was being driven from his country villa at Panenské Břežany
to his office at Prague Castle
. When he reached the Holešovice area of Prague
, his car was attacked by the Czech and Slovak soldiers (on behalf of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile), Jozef Gabčík
and Jan Kubiš
. These men, who had been part of a team trained in Great Britain
, parachuted into Bohemia
in December 1941 as part of Operation Anthropoid
. After Gabčík's Sten gun jammed, Heydrich ordered his driver, SS-Oberscharführer
Klein, to stop the car. When Heydrich stood up to try to shoot Gabčík, Kubiš threw a modified anti-tank grenade at Heydrich's car. Klein was shot twice by Gabčík (who was now using his revolver) and wounded. Both men managed to escape the scene of the assassination. On June 4, Heydrich died in Bulovka hospital in Prague from septicaemia caused by pieces of upholstery entering his body when the bomb exploded. Late in the afternoon of May 27, SS-Gruppenführer
Karl Hermann Frank
proclaimed a state of emergency and a curfew in Prague. Anyone who helped the attackers were to be executed along with their entire family. A massive search involving 21,000 men began. A total of 36,000 houses were checked. By June 4, 157 people had been executed as a result of the reprisals, but the assassins had not been found and no information was forthcoming.
The mourning speeches at Heydrich's funeral in Berlin were not yet over, when on June 9, the decision was made to "make up for his death". Karl Hermann Frank, Secretary of State for the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, reported from Berlin that the Führer
had commanded the following concerning any village found to have harboured Heydrich's killers:
Commander of the C division of the Einsatzgruppe, immediately acted on the orders. Members of the German Army
field police and SD (Sicherheitsdienst) surrounded the village of Lidice, blocking all avenues of escape. The Nazi regime chose this village because its residents were suspected of harboring local resistance partisans and were falsely associated with aiding "Operation Anthropoid" team members.
All men of the village were rounded up and taken to the farm of the Horák family on the edge of the village. Mattresses were taken from neighbouring houses where they were stood up against the wall of the Horáks' barn. The shooting of the men commenced at about 7 a.m. At first the men were shot in groups of five, but Böhme thought the executions were proceeding too slowly and ordered that ten men be shot at a time. The dead were left lying where they fell. This continued until the afternoon hours when there were 173 dead. Another 11 men who were not in the village that day were arrested and murdered soon afterwards as were eight men and seven women already under arrest because they had relations serving with the Czech army in exile in the United Kingdom
.
A total of 203 women and 105 children were first taken to Lidice village school. They were then taken to the nearby town of Kladno
and detained in the grammar school for three days. The children were separated from their mothers. Four women were pregnant and were sent to the same hospital where Heydrich died. Their unborn children were forcibly aborted and the women sent to different concentration camps. On June 12, 1942, 184 women of Lidice were loaded on truck
s, driven to Kladno railway station and forced into a special passenger train guarded by a escort. On the morning of June 14, 1942, the train halted on a railway siding at the concentration camp at Ravensbrück. On their arrival the Lidice women were first isolated in a special block. The women were forced to work in leather processing, road building, textile and ammunition factories. Lack of hygiene, epidemics and contagious diseases spread and killed most of the women. Some went mad and others were murdered.
Eighty-eight Lidice children were transported to the area of the former textile factory in Gneisenau Street in Łódź. Their arrival was announced by a telegram from Horst Böhme's Prague office which ended with: the children are only bringing what they wear. No special care is desirable. The care was minimal. They suffered from a lack of hygiene and from illnesses. By order of the camp management, no medical care was given to the children. Shortly after their arrival in Łódź, officials from the Central Race and Settlement branch chose seven children at random for Germanisation
. The few children considered racially suitable for Germanisation were handed over to SS families.
The furour over Lidice caused some hesitation over the fate of the remaining children. However, in late June Adolf Eichmann
ordered the massacre of the remainder of the children. On July 2, 1942, all of the remaining 81 Lidice children were handed over to the Łódź Gestapo
office, who in turn had them transported to the extermination camp at Chełmno
70 kilometres away, where they were gassed to death in Magirus
gas van
s. Out of the 105 Lidice children, 82 died in Chełmno, six died in the German Lebensborn
orphanages and 17 returned home.
The village of Lidice was set on fire and the remains of the buildings destroyed. Even those buried in the town cemetery were not spared. Their remains were dug up and destroyed. A film was made of the entire process by Franz Treml. A collaborator with German intelligence, Treml had run a Zeiss-Ikon shop in Lucerna Palace in Prague. After the Nazi occupation he became a filming adviser for the Nazi Party.
Altogether, about 340 people from Lidice died because of the German reprisal (192 men, 60 women and 88 children). Only 153 women and 17 children returned after the war.
A small Czech village called Ležáky
was also destroyed two weeks after Lidice. There both men and women were shot, and children were sent to concentration camps or 'Aryanised'. The death toll resulting from the effort to avenge the death of Heydrich is estimated at 1,300. This count includes relatives of the partisans, their supporters, Czech elites suspected of disloyalty and random victims like those from Lidice.
Nazi propaganda had openly, and proudly, announced the events in Lidice, unlike other massacres in occupied Europe which were kept secret. The information was instantly picked up by Allied media.
miner
s in Stoke-on-Trent
in Great Britain founded the organisation Lidice Shall Live to raise funds for the rebuilding of the village after the war.
Soon after the razing of the village, several towns in various countries were named after it (such as San Jerónimo-Lídice in Mexico City
, Barrio Lídice and its hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, Lídice de Capira in Panama
, and towns in Brazil
), so that the name would live on in spite of Hitler's intentions. A neighborhood in Crest Hill, Illinois
, was renamed from Stern Park to Lidice. A square in the English city of Coventry
, itself devastated during World War II, is named after Lidice. An alley in a very crowded area of downtown Santiago, Chile
is named after the town of Lidice too, and one of the buildings there has a small plaque that explains its tragic story. A street in Sofia
is named to commemorate the massacre.
In the wake of the massacre, Humphrey Jennings
directed a movie about Lidice, The Silent Village
(1943), using amateur actors from a Welsh mining village, Cwmgiedd. An American film was made in 1943 called Hitler's Madman
, however it contained a number of inaccuracies in the story. A more accurate British film, Operation Daybreak
, starring Timothy Bottoms
as Kubiš and Anthony Andrews as Gabčík, was released in 1975.
American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay
wrote a book-length verse play on the massacre, The Murder of Lidice, which was printed in its entirety in the Oct. 19, 1942, edition of Life magazine and published as a book that same year by Harper.
Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů
composed his Memorial to Lidice (an 8-minute orchestral work) in 1943 as a response to the massacre. The piece quotes from the Czech St Wenceslas Chorale, as well as, in the climax of the piece, the opening notes (dot-dot-dot-dash = V in Morse code) of Beethoven's 5th Symphony.
Two men from Lidice were in the United Kingdom serving in the Royal Air Force
at the time of the massacre. After 1945 Pilot Officer
Josef Horák and Flight Lieutenant
Josef Stříbrný returned to Czechoslovakia to serve in the Czechoslovak Air Force
. However, after the Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948
the new Communist government
would not allow them to apply to be housed in the new Lidice because they had served in the forces of one of the western powers. Horák and his family returned to Britain and the RAF and was killed in a flying accident in December 1948.
A sculpture from the 1990s by academic sculptor Marie Uchytilová stands today overlooking the site of the old village of Lidice. Entitled "The Memorial to the Children Victims of the War" it comprises 82 bronze
statues of children (42 girls and 40 boys) aged 1 to 16 to honour the children who were murdered at Chełmno in the summer of 1942. A cross with a crown of thorns marks the mass grave of the Lidice men. Overlooking the site is a memorial area flanked by a museum and a small exhibition hall. The memorial area is linked to the new village by an avenue of linden
trees. In 1955 a "Rosarium" of 29,000 rose
bushes was created beside the avenue of lindens overlooking the site of the old village. In the 1990s the Rosarium was neglected, but after 2001 a new Rosarium with 21,000 bushes was designed and created.
Situated 500 metres from the museum, in the new village, is an art gallery which displays permanent and temporary exhibitions. The annual children's art competition attracts entries worldwide.
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
just northwest of Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
. It is built on the site of a previous village of the same name which, as part of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was the majority ethnic-Czech protectorate which Nazi Germany established in the central parts of Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia in what is today the Czech Republic...
, was on orders from Reichsführer-SS
Reichsführer-SS
was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer-SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel .-Definition:...
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, completely destroyed by German forces in reprisal for the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
in the late spring of 1942. On June 10, 1942, all 173 men over 16 years of age from the village were murdered
War crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
. Another 11 men who were not in the village were arrested and murdered soon afterwards along with several others already under arrest. Several hundred women and over 100 children were deported to concentration camps; a few children considered racially suitable for Germanisation were handed over to SS families and the rest were sent to the Chełmno extermination camp where they were gassed to death. After the war ended, only 153 women and 17 children returned.
History
The village is first mentioned in writing in 1318. After the industrialization of the area, many of its people worked in mines and factories in the neighboring cities of KladnoKladno
Kladno is a city in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It is located 25 km northwest of Prague. Kladno is the largest city of the region and holds a population together with its adjacent suburban areas of more than 110,000 people...
and Slaný
Slaný
The Royal town1 of Slaný is a town in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic, located about 25 km northwest of Prague. The town is part of the Prague metropolitan area....
.
Heydrich's assassination
Since September 24, 1941, SS-ObergruppenführerObergruppenführer
Obergruppenführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the SA and until 1942 it was the highest SS rank inferior only to Reichsführer-SS...
and General of Police Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
had been Acting Reichsprotektor of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was the majority ethnic-Czech protectorate which Nazi Germany established in the central parts of Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia in what is today the Czech Republic...
. This area of the former Czechoslovakia had been occupied by Nazi Germany since April 5, 1939.
Panenské Břežany
Panenské Břežany is a village and municipality in Prague-East District in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic.The municipality covers an area of 5.79 km² and as of 2010 it had a population of 567....
to his office at Prague Castle
Prague Castle
Prague Castle is a castle in Prague where the Kings of Bohemia, Holy Roman Emperors and presidents of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic have had their offices. The Czech Crown Jewels are kept here...
. When he reached the Holešovice area of Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, his car was attacked by the Czech and Slovak soldiers (on behalf of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile), Jozef Gabčík
Jozef Gabcík
Jozef Gabčík was a Slovak soldier of Czechoslovak army involved in Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of acting Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich....
and Jan Kubiš
Jan Kubiš
Jan Kubiš was a Czech soldier, one of a team of Czechoslovak British-trained soldiers sent to assassinate acting Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, in 1942 as part of Operation Anthropoid.- Biography :Jan Kubiš was born in 1913 in Dolní Vilémovice,...
. These men, who had been part of a team trained in Great Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, parachuted into Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
in December 1941 as part of Operation Anthropoid
Operation Anthropoid
Operation Anthropoid was the code name for the targeted killing of top German SS leader Reinhard Heydrich. He was the chief of the Reich Main Security Office , the acting Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, and a chief planner of the Final Solution, the Nazi German programme for the genocide of the...
. After Gabčík's Sten gun jammed, Heydrich ordered his driver, SS-Oberscharführer
Oberscharführer
Oberscharführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that existed between the years of 1932 and 1945. Translated as “Senior Squad Leader”, Oberscharführer was first used as a rank of the Sturmabteilung and was created due to an expansion of the enlisted positions required by growing SA membership...
Klein, to stop the car. When Heydrich stood up to try to shoot Gabčík, Kubiš threw a modified anti-tank grenade at Heydrich's car. Klein was shot twice by Gabčík (who was now using his revolver) and wounded. Both men managed to escape the scene of the assassination. On June 4, Heydrich died in Bulovka hospital in Prague from septicaemia caused by pieces of upholstery entering his body when the bomb exploded. Late in the afternoon of May 27, SS-Gruppenführer
Gruppenführer
Gruppenführer was an early paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party, first created in 1925 as a senior rank of the SA.-SS rank:...
Karl Hermann Frank
Karl Hermann Frank
Karl Hermann Frank was a prominent Sudeten German Nazi official in Czechoslovakia prior to and during World War II and an SS-Obergruppenführer...
proclaimed a state of emergency and a curfew in Prague. Anyone who helped the attackers were to be executed along with their entire family. A massive search involving 21,000 men began. A total of 36,000 houses were checked. By June 4, 157 people had been executed as a result of the reprisals, but the assassins had not been found and no information was forthcoming.
The mourning speeches at Heydrich's funeral in Berlin were not yet over, when on June 9, the decision was made to "make up for his death". Karl Hermann Frank, Secretary of State for the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, reported from Berlin that the Führer
Führer
Führer , alternatively spelled Fuehrer in both English and German when the umlaut is not available, is a German title meaning leader or guide now most associated with Adolf Hitler, who modelled it on Benito Mussolini's title il Duce, as well as with Georg von Schönerer, whose followers also...
had commanded the following concerning any village found to have harboured Heydrich's killers:
- Execute all adult men
- Transport all women to a concentration camp
- Gather the children suitable for Germanization, then place them in SS families in the Reich and bring the rest of the children up in other ways
- Burn down the village and level it entirely
Massacre
Horst Böhme, SSSchutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
Commander of the C division of the Einsatzgruppe, immediately acted on the orders. Members of the German Army
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
field police and SD (Sicherheitsdienst) surrounded the village of Lidice, blocking all avenues of escape. The Nazi regime chose this village because its residents were suspected of harboring local resistance partisans and were falsely associated with aiding "Operation Anthropoid" team members.
All men of the village were rounded up and taken to the farm of the Horák family on the edge of the village. Mattresses were taken from neighbouring houses where they were stood up against the wall of the Horáks' barn. The shooting of the men commenced at about 7 a.m. At first the men were shot in groups of five, but Böhme thought the executions were proceeding too slowly and ordered that ten men be shot at a time. The dead were left lying where they fell. This continued until the afternoon hours when there were 173 dead. Another 11 men who were not in the village that day were arrested and murdered soon afterwards as were eight men and seven women already under arrest because they had relations serving with the Czech army in exile in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
.
A total of 203 women and 105 children were first taken to Lidice village school. They were then taken to the nearby town of Kladno
Kladno
Kladno is a city in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It is located 25 km northwest of Prague. Kladno is the largest city of the region and holds a population together with its adjacent suburban areas of more than 110,000 people...
and detained in the grammar school for three days. The children were separated from their mothers. Four women were pregnant and were sent to the same hospital where Heydrich died. Their unborn children were forcibly aborted and the women sent to different concentration camps. On June 12, 1942, 184 women of Lidice were loaded on truck
Truck
A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, with the smallest being mechanically similar to an automobile...
s, driven to Kladno railway station and forced into a special passenger train guarded by a escort. On the morning of June 14, 1942, the train halted on a railway siding at the concentration camp at Ravensbrück. On their arrival the Lidice women were first isolated in a special block. The women were forced to work in leather processing, road building, textile and ammunition factories. Lack of hygiene, epidemics and contagious diseases spread and killed most of the women. Some went mad and others were murdered.
Eighty-eight Lidice children were transported to the area of the former textile factory in Gneisenau Street in Łódź. Their arrival was announced by a telegram from Horst Böhme's Prague office which ended with: the children are only bringing what they wear. No special care is desirable. The care was minimal. They suffered from a lack of hygiene and from illnesses. By order of the camp management, no medical care was given to the children. Shortly after their arrival in Łódź, officials from the Central Race and Settlement branch chose seven children at random for Germanisation
Germanisation
Germanisation is both the spread of the German language, people and culture either by force or assimilation, and the adaptation of a foreign word to the German language in linguistics, much like the Romanisation of many languages which do not use the Latin alphabet...
. The few children considered racially suitable for Germanisation were handed over to SS families.
The furour over Lidice caused some hesitation over the fate of the remaining children. However, in late June Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
ordered the massacre of the remainder of the children. On July 2, 1942, all of the remaining 81 Lidice children were handed over to the Łódź Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
office, who in turn had them transported to the extermination camp at Chełmno
Chelmno extermination camp
Chełmno extermination camp, also known as the Kulmhof concentration camp, was a Nazi German extermination camp that was situated 50 kilometres from Łódź, near a small village called Chełmno nad Nerem . After annexation by Germany Kulmhof was included into Reichsgau Wartheland in 1939...
70 kilometres away, where they were gassed to death in Magirus
Magirus
Iveco Magirus AG is a truck manufacturer based in Ulm, Germany, founded by Conrad Dietrich Magirus . The company began manufacturing fire-fighting vehicles in 1864. In the late 1910s, it started the production of trucks and buses...
gas van
Gas van
The gas van or gas wagon was an extermination method devised by Nazi Germany to kill victims of the regime. It was also rumored that analog of such device was used by the Soviet Union on an experimental basis during the Great Purge-Nazi Germany:...
s. Out of the 105 Lidice children, 82 died in Chełmno, six died in the German Lebensborn
Lebensborn
Lebensborn was a Nazi programme set up by SS leader Heinrich Himmler that provided maternity homes and financial assistance to the wives of SS members and to unmarried mothers, and also ran orphanages and relocation programmes for children.Initially set up in Germany in 1935, Lebensborn expanded...
orphanages and 17 returned home.
The village of Lidice was set on fire and the remains of the buildings destroyed. Even those buried in the town cemetery were not spared. Their remains were dug up and destroyed. A film was made of the entire process by Franz Treml. A collaborator with German intelligence, Treml had run a Zeiss-Ikon shop in Lucerna Palace in Prague. After the Nazi occupation he became a filming adviser for the Nazi Party.
Altogether, about 340 people from Lidice died because of the German reprisal (192 men, 60 women and 88 children). Only 153 women and 17 children returned after the war.
A small Czech village called Ležáky
Ležáky
Ležáky was a village in Czechoslovakia. In 1942 it was razed to the ground by Nazis during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.Ležáky was a settlement inhabited by poor stone-cutters and little cottagers...
was also destroyed two weeks after Lidice. There both men and women were shot, and children were sent to concentration camps or 'Aryanised'. The death toll resulting from the effort to avenge the death of Heydrich is estimated at 1,300. This count includes relatives of the partisans, their supporters, Czech elites suspected of disloyalty and random victims like those from Lidice.
Commemorations
In September 1942, coalCoal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
miner
Miner
A miner is a person whose work or business is to extract ore or minerals from the earth. Mining is one of the most dangerous trades in the world. In some countries miners lack social guarantees and in case of injury may be left to cope without assistance....
s in Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent , also called The Potteries is a city in Staffordshire, England, which forms a linear conurbation almost 12 miles long, with an area of . Together with the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme Stoke forms The Potteries Urban Area...
in Great Britain founded the organisation Lidice Shall Live to raise funds for the rebuilding of the village after the war.
Soon after the razing of the village, several towns in various countries were named after it (such as San Jerónimo-Lídice in Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
, Barrio Lídice and its hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, Lídice de Capira in Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
, and towns in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
), so that the name would live on in spite of Hitler's intentions. A neighborhood in Crest Hill, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, was renamed from Stern Park to Lidice. A square in the English city of Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
, itself devastated during World War II, is named after Lidice. An alley in a very crowded area of downtown Santiago, Chile
Santiago, Chile
Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...
is named after the town of Lidice too, and one of the buildings there has a small plaque that explains its tragic story. A street in Sofia
Sofia
Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...
is named to commemorate the massacre.
In the wake of the massacre, Humphrey Jennings
Humphrey Jennings
Frank Humphrey Sinkler Jennings was an English documentary filmmaker and one of the founders of the Mass Observation organization...
directed a movie about Lidice, The Silent Village
The Silent Village
The Silent Village is a 1943 British propaganda short film in the form of a drama documentary, made by the Crown Film Unit and directed by Humphrey Jennings...
(1943), using amateur actors from a Welsh mining village, Cwmgiedd. An American film was made in 1943 called Hitler's Madman
Hitler's Madman
Hitler's Madman is a 1943 World War II film about the assassination of Nazi Reinhard Heydrich and the revenge taken by the Germans. It was produced by Seymour Nebenzal for PRC and Angelus Pictures, Inc. The shooting of Hitler's Madman took place late in 1942 and early 1943...
, however it contained a number of inaccuracies in the story. A more accurate British film, Operation Daybreak
Operation Daybreak
Operation Daybreak is a 1975 World War II film based on the true story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague - starring Anthony Andrews, Timothy Bottoms and Martin Shaw. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert and shot mostly on location in Prague. It was adapted from the book Seven Men...
, starring Timothy Bottoms
Timothy Bottoms
-Early life:Bottoms was born in Santa Barbara, California, the eldest son of Betty and James "Bud" Bottoms, who is a sculptor and art teacher. He is the brother of actors Joseph Bottoms , Sam Bottoms and Ben Bottoms . In 1967, Bottoms toured Europe as part of the Santa Barbara Madrigal...
as Kubiš and Anthony Andrews as Gabčík, was released in 1975.
American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet, playwright and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and was known for her activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work...
wrote a book-length verse play on the massacre, The Murder of Lidice, which was printed in its entirety in the Oct. 19, 1942, edition of Life magazine and published as a book that same year by Harper.
Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů
Bohuslav Martinu
Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...
composed his Memorial to Lidice (an 8-minute orchestral work) in 1943 as a response to the massacre. The piece quotes from the Czech St Wenceslas Chorale, as well as, in the climax of the piece, the opening notes (dot-dot-dot-dash = V in Morse code) of Beethoven's 5th Symphony.
Lidice since 1945
Women from Lidice who survived imprisonment at Ravensbrück returned after the Second World War. They were rehoused in a new village of Lidice that was built overlooking the original site. The first part of the new village was completed in 1949.Two men from Lidice were in the United Kingdom serving in the Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
at the time of the massacre. After 1945 Pilot Officer
Pilot Officer
Pilot officer is the lowest commissioned rank in the Royal Air Force and the air forces of many other Commonwealth countries. It ranks immediately below flying officer...
Josef Horák and Flight Lieutenant
Flight Lieutenant
Flight lieutenant is a junior commissioned rank in the Royal Air Force and the air forces of many Commonwealth countries. It ranks above flying officer and immediately below squadron leader. The name of the rank is the complete phrase; it is never shortened to "lieutenant"...
Josef Stříbrný returned to Czechoslovakia to serve in the Czechoslovak Air Force
Czech Air Force
The Czech Air Force is the air force branch of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic. The Air Force, with the Land Forces, comprises the Joint Forces, the main combat power of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic...
. However, after the Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948
Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948
The Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948 – in Communist historiography known as "Victorious February" – was an event late that February in which the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, with Soviet backing, assumed undisputed control over the government of Czechoslovakia, ushering in over four decades...
the new Communist government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
would not allow them to apply to be housed in the new Lidice because they had served in the forces of one of the western powers. Horák and his family returned to Britain and the RAF and was killed in a flying accident in December 1948.
A sculpture from the 1990s by academic sculptor Marie Uchytilová stands today overlooking the site of the old village of Lidice. Entitled "The Memorial to the Children Victims of the War" it comprises 82 bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
statues of children (42 girls and 40 boys) aged 1 to 16 to honour the children who were murdered at Chełmno in the summer of 1942. A cross with a crown of thorns marks the mass grave of the Lidice men. Overlooking the site is a memorial area flanked by a museum and a small exhibition hall. The memorial area is linked to the new village by an avenue of linden
Tilia
Tilia is a genus of about 30 species of trees native throughout most of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The greatest species diversity is found in Asia, and the genus also occurs in Europe and eastern North America, but not western North America...
trees. In 1955 a "Rosarium" of 29,000 rose
Rose
A rose is a woody perennial of the genus Rosa, within the family Rosaceae. There are over 100 species. They form a group of erect shrubs, and climbing or trailing plants, with stems that are often armed with sharp prickles. Flowers are large and showy, in colours ranging from white through yellows...
bushes was created beside the avenue of lindens overlooking the site of the old village. In the 1990s the Rosarium was neglected, but after 2001 a new Rosarium with 21,000 bushes was designed and created.
Situated 500 metres from the museum, in the new village, is an art gallery which displays permanent and temporary exhibitions. The annual children's art competition attracts entries worldwide.
See also
- Collective punishmentCollective punishmentCollective punishment is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behavior of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions...
- Operation KutscheraOperation KutscheraOperation Kutschera was the code name for the successful assassination of Franz Kutschera, SS and Reich's Police Chief in Warsaw, executed on 1 February 1944 by the Polish Resistance fighters of Home Army's Anti-Gestapo unit Agat...
- List of massacres
- ReprisalReprisalIn international law, a reprisal is a limited and deliberate violation of international law to punish another sovereign state that has already broken them. Reprisals in the laws of war are extremely limited, as they commonly breached the rights of civilians, an action outlawed by the Geneva...
- Sir Barnett StrossBarnett StrossSir Barnett Stross KBE was a British doctor and politician. He served twenty years as a Labour Party Member of Parliament, famously led the humanitarian campaign "Lidice Shall Live" and pushed for reforms in industry to protect workers-Early life:Barnett Stross was born to a Jewish family,...
- Lou KentonLou KentonLou Kenton is an English potter, who served as an ambulance driver with the International Brigade and is its oldest surviving member.- Early life :...
- Khatyn massacreKhatyn massacreKhatyn, Chatyń was a village in Belarus, in Lahojsk district, Minsk Voblast. On March 22, 1943, the population of the village was massacred during World War II by the 118th Schutzmannschaft battalion, formed in July 1942 in Kiev, mostly from Ukrainian collaborators, prisoners of war and...
- German war crimesGerman war crimesThe government of Germany ordered, organized and condoned several war crimes in both World War I and World War II. The most notable of these is the Holocaust in which millions of people were murdered or died from abuse and neglect, 60% of them Jews...
- Oradour-sur-GlaneOradour-sur-GlaneOradour-sur-Glane is a commune in the Haute-Vienne department in the Limousin region in west-central France.The original village was destroyed on 10 June 1944, when 642 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company...
- PostoloprtyPostoloprtyPostoloprty is a town in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic, situated about 7 km west of Louny. It has around 5,000 inhabitants....
Books
- Jan Kaplan and Krystyna Nosarzewska, Prague: The Turbulent Century, Koenemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Koeln, (1997) ISBN 3-89508-528-6
- Joan M. Wolf: Someone Named EvaSomeone Named EvaSomeone Named Eva is a young adult novel by Joan M. Wolf. It concentrates on the life of Milada, an eleven-year-old Czech girl, who lives during World War II, after Hitler annexes Czechoslovakia, during the years 1942–1945.-Plot summary:'...
. 2007. ISBN 0618535799 - Eduard Stehlík: Lidice, The Story of a Czech Village. 2004. ISBN 8086758141
- Zena Irma Trinka: A little village called Lidice: Story of the return of the women and children of Lidice. International Book Publishers, Western Office, Lidgerwood, North DakotaLidgerwood, North DakotaAs of the census of 2000, there were 738 people, 345 households, and 207 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,122.4 people per square mile . There were 404 housing units at an average density of 614.4 per square mile . The racial makeup of the city was 97.29% White, 1.76%...
, 1947. - Maureen Myant: The Search. Alma Books, 2010. ISBN 9781846881039
External links
- A fictionalized account of the death of Reinhard Heydrich and the reprisal against Licide. - The true story of the massacre of a small Czech village by the Nazis is retold as if it happened in Wales.- Alan Heath : Fate of the children of Lidice Lidice Memorial Official Website of Municipality Recent (since 1990s) search for missing children Photo series about destruction of Lidice by ReichsarbeitsdienstReichsarbeitsdienstThe Reichsarbeitsdienst was an institution established by Nazi Germany as an agency to reduce unemployment, similar to the relief programs in other countries. During the Second World War it was an auxiliary formation which provided support for the Wehrmacht.The RAD was formed during July 1934 as...
"Lidice" film Official website, directed by Petr Nikolaev The first ever Czech-made feature film about the destruction of Lidice (to be released in spring 2011).