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It was an ugly day in Lidice. In a World War that spanned nearly 2,200 days, there were bound to be a fair share of ugly days, but June 10, 1942 was particularly nasty for the small town located just a few miles from Prague. At 7:00am, when preparing for work or eating breakfast was the normal activity, the town was quiet, but all was not well.
Lidice’s entire population had been rounded up by a German Einsatzgruppe and taken to a farm. There, all the men 16 years or older, 173 in total, were lined up and shot. The 184 women were placed on a train and set to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where most would die. The remaining 106 children were sent into forced labor and, within months, most had been gassed at Chelmo.
Meanwhile, every building in Lidice was burned to the ground by the Germans, then bulldozed over. The bodies in Lidice’s cemetary were exhumed and burned. When the town had been razed, trees were planted over the site. All traces of Lidice were erased. This was repeated two weeks later in the village of Lezaky.
But why?!? In 1939, Germany had taken over Czechoslavakia and divided it among its allies, but made ”The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” a part of Germany. Reinhard Heydrich was installed as its leader. Called “the Butcher of Prague”, it’s obvious that he was greatly disliked by many Czechs. On May 27, 1942, Heydrich was attacked while riding in his car. Though grievously wounded, he would live until June 4th, when he died of blood poisoning from his wounds.
Receiving the news of Heydrich’s death, Adolf Hitler went ballistic and ordered any village suspected of housing the killers to be completely destroyed. There isn’t any strong evidence that Heydrich’s assassins ever stayed in Lidice, but the town had definite anti-Nazi leanings and had harbored Czech partisans in the past and, this time, that was all it took. The German dictator always demanded an outrageous price as retribution, and it usually involved innocent people with little or no connection to the event in question.
And so, while Heydrich’s two assassins would be cornered and killed, Hitlerian justice cut a much wider path. And what’s more, Germany did little to keep Lidice’s destruction a secret. It was filmed for posterity and news of the event was broadcast by the Germans themselves, a brazen and audacious move even for Germany at this time.
