Lidice

Current-day Lidice
Area	4.7 km²
Population	451 (2003)

Less than a half-hour by car west of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, lies a small village in the rolling hills of Bohemia named Lidice. There is little to distinguish it from other small Bohemian villages except for its complete lack of timeworn, traditional edifices and for its large number of memorial statuary.

During World War II, when Czechoslovakia was occupied by the forces of Nazi Germany, Lidice paid the ultimate price for incurring the wrath of Adolf Hitler. The village, along with another smaller Czech hamlet, was totally eradicated and its populace destroyed in 1942 in retribution for the killing of one of Hitler's favored lieutenants.

A new Lidice (pronounced LIH-dut-see), rebuilt after the war, stands in defiance of and testimony to the uncontrolled hatred of the Nazi era. Though hardly the first or worst such incident in human history, the village's demise remains a bleak milestone in the record of 20th-century cruelty and ruthlessness.

History

Much of Eastern Europe, including Prague and Bohemia, was Christianized in the 13th century. (Prague itself underwent an important wave of Germanic settlement around 1235.) The first mention in writing of the village of Lidice was in 1318, by which time all of Bohemia was a part of the Holy Roman Empire.

The scourge of European religious wars (mainly the Hussite War and the Thirty Years War) caused the village to be destroyed and rebuilt at least twice by the 17th century. When the Industrial Revolution reached Bohemia in the 20th century, many of Lidice's people worked in mines and factories in the neighbouring small cities of Kladno and Slaný. At the end of World War I, Czechoslovakia was established as a country, the union of Bohemia with Moravia and Slovakia, all three being former provinces of the collapsed Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In about two decades, the world was at war again and Czechoslovakia was at the center of the conflict. Lidice sits solidly in the middle of Bohemia and not in the part that Hitler demanded in 1938 to be carved away and added to Germany, but by the following year German forces seized all the rest of the country as well, including the town. This act of defiance and treaty-breaking with Britain and France is one of several principal causes of World War II.

Lidice Pre-Massacre

By 1942, Lidice consisted of one road, a baroque Catholic church on a small plaza, a school, and a scattering of family homes headed by men who largely worked as miners and ironworkers, all on a small rise above the surrounding countryside.

Hitler had placed a trusted official, Reinhard Heydrich, as deputy administrator for Bohemia and Moravia. Heydrich had already made a name for himself as the second in command of the Nazi SS after Heinrich Himmler. Early in 1942 he headed the Wannsee Conference near Berlin, which devised the infamous "final solution" to the "Jewish question."

On May 27, Heydrich was being driven into the capital from his residence to the north of Prague when his motorcade was attacked on the city's outskirts by a small team of Czech and Slovak assassins dispatched months earlier by the nationalist resistance based in London. Eight days later Heydrich died of his wounds. Hitler, enraged, ordered his forces in Czechoslovakia to "wade through blood" to find Heydrich's killers. The Germans began a massive retaliation campaign against the civilian Czech populace.

Lidice Massacre

The best known of these assaults occurred on June 10. German security police surrounded the village of Lidice the night before, rousted all the residents, and forced them into locked buildings, blocking all avenues of escape out of the village. The Nazis chose this community for its residents' known hostility to the occupation, from suspicion that it was harbouring local resistance partisans, and for its supposed connection to one of Heydrich's killers. In the early morning all women and children (under 16 years of age), a total of nearly 300, were trucked away to concentration camps, about half of whom are known to have survived. Later the men were brought out in small groups throughout the day, lined up against walls, and shot to death. Another 19 men, who were working in a mine, along with seven women, were sent to Prague, where they were also shot. The village itself was razed and bulldozed, even domesticated animals were destroyed. A genuine film document, made by a German soldier, has survived.

All together, about 340 people died in the Nazi reprisal in Lidice. 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 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 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.

• History of the village
• Lidice Memorial

Credits

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