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| Area: | 4.7 Km&2 |
| Population: | 451 ''(2003)'' |
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(''Liditz'' in
German ) is a village in
Czechoslovakia (now the
Czech Republic ) which was completely eradicated by the
Nazis during
World War II .
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 .
In 1942,
Reinhard Heydrich was the ''
Reichsprotektor '' (nazi representative in the Czech puppet-state) 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 Chamber s 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 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 died 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).
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 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.
