Lidice
Encyclopedia : L : LI : LID : Lidice
| Statistics | |
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| Area: | 4.7 km² |
| Population: | 451 (2003) |
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Lidice (Liditz in German) is a village in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) which was completely destroyed by the Nazis during World War II. About 340 men, women and children from the village were murdered by the Nazis.
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.Lidice Massacre
In 1942, Reinhard Heydrich was the Reichsprotektor 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 Czech 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 populace.
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 in the gas chambers or from 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 gassed in Chełmno. The village itself was razed and bulldozed. A genuine film document, made by a German soldier, has survived.
All together, 340 people from Lidice were murdered because of the Nazi 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 proudly announced events in Lidice, unlike other massacres in occupied Europe which were kept in secret. The information was picked by Allied media and used in their propaganda (a movie about Lidice was filmed in Britain soon after the event).
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.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.
External links
- [History of the village]
- [Lidice Memorial]
- [Official Website of Municipality (in Czech)]
- [Recent search for missing children (in Czech)]
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