Lidice
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Lidice | |
| Village | |
 Museum
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| Country |  Czech Republic |
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| Region | Central Bohemian |
| District | Kladno |
| Little District | Kladno |
| Elevation | 343 m (1,125 ft) |
| Coordinates | |
| Area | 4.74 km² (1.83 sq mi) |
| Population | 435 (2006) |
| Density | 92 /km² (238 /sq mi) |
| First mentioned | 1318 |
| Mayor | Václav Zelenka |
| Postal code | 273 54 |
   Location in the Czech Republic
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| Wikimedia Commons: Lidice | |
| Website: www.lidice.cz | |
Lidice (German: Liditz) is a village in Czech Republic just north-west of Prague which, as part of Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was completely destroyed by the Germans in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich during World War II. On June 10, 1942, all 192 men over 16 years of age from the village were murdered on the spot by the Germans in a much publicized atrocity. The rest of the population were sent to Nazi concentration camps where many women and nearly all the children were killed.
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[edit] 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 neighbouring cities of Kladno and Slaný.
[edit] Massacre
In 1942, Reinhard Heydrich was the deputy Reichsprotektor of the Nazi German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This area of the former Czechoslovakia had been occupied by Germany since 1939. On the morning of Wednesday May 27, 1942, he 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 two Czechoslovak resistance fighters, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. These men, who had been trained in Britain, had parachuted into Bohemia in December, 1941, as part of Operation Anthropoid. After Gabčík's Sten gun failed, Kubiš threw a bomb at Heydrich's car. Heydrich was fatally injured by the explosion. Both the parachutists managed to escape the scene of the assassination and hide in places that had been prepared in advance. On June 4, 1942, after lingering for days, Heydrich died in Bulovka hospital in Prague from blood poisoning caused by pieces of upholstery entering his body when the bomb thrown at his car exploded. Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich, shocked and enraged by the assassination, ordered Kurt Daluege, Heydrich's replacement, to `wade through blood` to find Heydrich's killers. The Germans began an unprecedentedly massive and bloody retaliation campaign targeting the entire Czech population.
The mourning speeches at Heydrich's funeral in Berlin were not yet over when on June 9, 1942 the decision was made to `make up for his death`. Karl Hermann Frank, Secretary of State for the German 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:
- 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
Horst Böhme, SS Commander of the C division of the Einsatzgruppe, acted on the commands immediately. Members of German security police (SS) surrounded the village of Lidice, blocking all avenues of escape. The Nazi regime chose this village because of its residents' known hostility to the occupation, and because Lidice was suspected of harboring local resistance partisans. The entire population was rounded up and taken to a Horak farm. Women and children were taken to the school building from where they were transported. Mattresses were taken from neighbouring houses where they were stood up against the wall of the barn. Shooting of the men commenced around seven in the morning. The men were brought out in groups of five. Böhme thought the executions were proceeding too slowly and ordered that ten men be executed at a time. The dead were left lying where they fell and the newly brought out soon-to-be victims had to first walk past them and stand in front of them. The firing squad always took two steps back and the scene of horror repeated itself. The men were not blindfolded and were taken to the place of execution without bonds. This spectacle continued until the afternoon hours when there were 173 dead bodies lying in the Horak farm orchard. The next day, another nineteen men who were working in a mine, along with seven women, were sent to Prague, where they were also shot.
After the forced separation from their children, 184 women of Lidice were loaded on trucks on June 12, 1942 and driven to Kladno train station and forced into a special passenger train guarded by a large escort. In the morning of June 14, 1942 the train halted in the railway siding where it was met by several dozen armed women warders with dogs. Under constant shouting and verbal abuse, the Lidice women had reached their destination. They were in the concentration camp at Ravensbrück. On their arrival the Lidice women were first isolated in a special block. The women were involved in leather processing, road building, textile and ammunition factories. At the ammunition factory the slightest offense was punishable by standing and starving for many hours, or immersed in ice-cold water. Lack of hygiene, epidemics and contagious diseases spread and took most of the women. Some went mad and others were murdered with few surviving.
Eighty-eight Lidice children were transported to the area of the former textile factory in Gneisenaustreet of 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. The children were not fed sufficiently and a few babies cared for by the older girls were constantly crying with hunger. The children slept on plain floors and covered themselves with coats if they had any brought from home. They suffered from a lack of hygiene and from illnesses. Under commands from 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 Germanization. Adolf Eichmann ordered in late June the order for the massacre of the rest of the children. On July 1, 1942, the Lidice children were given the chance to write lettercards to their relatives. On July 2, 1942 all of the remaining 81 Lidice children were handed over to the Lodz Gestapo office, who in turn had them transported to the extermination camp at Chelmo 70 kilometers away. It is almost certain[citation needed] they were gassed to death on the very day of their arrival. Out of the 105 Lidice children, 82 died in Chelmno, 6 died in the German Lebensborn orphanages and 17 returned back home.
The village of Lidice was set aflame and the remains of the buildings were bulldozed, every last remaining piece of evidence being destroyed. Even those buried in the town cemetery were not spared. Their remains were dug up and destroyed.[citation needed] A film was made of the entire process by Franz Treml, a collaborator with German intelligence, Treml had ran a Zeiss-Ikon shop in Lucerna Palace in Prague. After the German occupation he became a filming adviser for the National Socialist German Workers Party.
Altogether, about 340 people from Lidice died because of the German reprisal (192 men, 60 women and 88 children).
A small Czech village called Ležáky was also destroyed two weeks after Lidice. Here both men and women were shot, and children were sent to concentration camps or 'Aryanized'.
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. A movie about Lidice (The Silent Village) directed by Humphrey Jennings and using amateur actors from a Welsh mining village was filmed soon after the event.
An American film was also made in 1943 entitled (Hitler's Madman) though this film contained a number of inaccuracies in the story. A UK film which was more accurate was made later in the 1980/90s
[edit] Lidice today
.JPG/300px-Memorial_lidice_children_(2007).JPG)
Although the village of Lidice was destroyed completely, it was rebuilt in 1949, after the war, in a location close to the original site.
A sculpture from the 1990s, by academic sculptor Marie Uchytilová, stands today in the centre of the old village of Lidice. Entitled 'The Memorial to the Children Victims of the War', it is composed of 82 statues of children (42 girls and 40 boys) aged 1 to 16, to honour the children who were murdered in the extermination camp at Chełmno in summer 1942. There is a Rose Park where the old village once was, surrounded by tall trees. There is a cross of thorns above the mass grave of the Lidice men.
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 neighbourhood in Crest Hill, Illinois, was also renamed from Stern Park to Lidice.[1]Lidice also became a woman's name in several countries.[citation needed] A square in the English city of Coventry, itself devastated during World War II, is named after Lidice. An alley in downtown Santiago of Chile is also named after the town of Lidice.
[edit] References
- 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 Dakota, 1947.
- Eduard Stehlík: Lidice, The Story of a Czech Village. 2004. ISBN 80-86758-14-1
[edit] See also
- Collective punishment
- List of massacres
- Reprisal
- Sir Barnett Stross
- Khatyn massacre
- German war crimes
[edit] External links
- (English) (Czech) (German) (Russian) History of the village
- (English) (Czech) (German) (Russian) Lidice Memorial
- (Czech) Official Website of Municipality
- (Czech) Recent (since 1990s) search for missing children
- (Czech) Photo series about destruction of Lidice by Reichsarbeitsdienst
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