Lidice

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Statistics
Area:	4.74 km²
Population:	435 (2006)
Map

Lidice (Liditz in German) is a village in former Czechoslovakia (now in the Czech Republic) which was completely destroyed by the Germans during World War II. About 340 men, women, and children from the village were murdered by the Germans.

1 History
- 1.1 Lidice massacre
- 1.2 Lidice today
2 See also
3 External links

[edit] History

The village is first mentioned in writing in 1318. After the industrialisation of the area, many of its people worked in mines and factories in the neighbouring cities of Kladno and Slaný.

[edit] Lidice massacre

In 1942, Reinhard Heydrich was the Reichsprotektor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which had been occupied by Germany in 1939. On the morning of May 27, 1942, he was being driven from his country villa to his office in Prague. 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 Czechoslovakia in December, 1941, as part of Operation Anthropoid. On June 4, 1942, Heydrich died in Bulovka hospital in Prague from an infection. Hitler, enraged, ordered Kurt Daluege, Heydrich's replacement, to wade through blood to find Heydrich's killers. The Germans began a massive retaliation campaign against the civilian Czech population.

Men massacred in Lidice

The best known of these assaults occurred on June 10. German security police surrounded the village of Lidice, blocking all avenues of escape. The Nazis chose this village because of its residents' known hostility to the occupation and because Lidice was suspected of harbouring local resistance partisans. The entire population was rounded up, and all men over fifteen years of age were put in a barn. They were shot 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. The remaining women were shipped to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where about a quarter of them died from typhus or overwork. The children were taken to a concentration camp at the Gneisenaustreet in Łódź (nowadays in Poland), where they were sorted by racial criteria, and those deemed suitable for 'Aryanization' were shipped to Germany (after the war most were found and returned); the rest of the children (82) were possibly sent to Chełmno.^{[citation needed]} The village itself was razed and bulldozed. A genuine film document, made by a German soldier, has survived.

All together, about 340 people from Lidice were murdered because of the German reprisal (192 men, 60 women and possibly 88 children). Nowadays, there are hints that perhaps more children could have survived the massacre. The Czech government stated in 2005, that at least one child believed to have died in Chełmno, Marta Hroníkova, born 1941, is still alive - a trace followed by the German journalist Kerstin Schicha and the German barrister Frank Metzing.

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 proudly announced events in Lidice, unlike other massacres in occupied Europe which were kept in secret. The information was instantly picked up by Allied media and a movie about Lidice (The Silent Village, an initiative by Avigdor Dagan) was filmed in Britain soon after the event.

[edit] Lidice today

Although the village of Lidice was destroyed completely, it was rebuilt after the war, in 1949. Soon after the razing of the village, several towns in various countries (such as San Jerónimo-Lídice in Mexico City as well as Barrio Lídice and its Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, the town of Lídice de Capira in Panama, and towns in Brazil) took the name of Lidice, 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. Lidice also became a woman's name in several countries. A square in the English city of Coventry, itself devastated during World War II, is named after Lidice.

Today, rebuilt in an adjacent location, the village resembles its neighbours, with only a large memorial distinguishing it from the other villages in the area.

Ležáky was not rebuilt, and only a memorial remains now.