Lidice: The Annihilation of an Entire Czech Town
Intro
‘Welcome to an episode on a dark chapter in history as we delve into the chilling events of the Lidice massacre. We will unravel the heinous reprisals orchestrated by the Nazis in response to Operation Anthropoid—an assassination mission targeting the Acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich. On 27 May 1942, in the heart of Prague, two courageous Czech special operatives undertook a mission that would unleash a wave of devastation, culminating in the annihilation of an entire Czech village. You’re about to discover the harrowing tale that unfolded in the aftermath of this daring operation.’
Info about Lidice
‘Lidice was a small Czech town located 20 km from Prague and 8 km from Kladno, consisting of 102 family houses with 503 residents primarily engaged in steelworks and coal mines in the nearby town of Kladno. The village played a central role in Czechoslovakia’s steelwork and mining industry.
‘Historically, Lidice dates back to 1318, with the first documented public building, St. Martin’s Church, built in 1352. Despite damage during the Hussite Wars and the Thirty Years’ War, the church was rebuilt, and a new Baroque church was constructed in the 16th century. In the late 1800s, Lidice thrived as a mining community due to the expansion of Kladno’s businesses, with the population reaching 506 people by 1890.’
Events leading to reprisal
‘On the evening of 27 May, as Heydrich lay in hospital fighting for his life,
Karl Hermann Frank, the head of the Gestapo in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, declared a state of emergency in Prague and imposed a curfew. Those aiding the attackers faced execution, along with their families. A massive search involving 21,000 men checked 36,000 houses. By 4 June, 157 people were executed in reprisals, but the assassins remained elusive, and no information surfaced.
‘The Gestapo then came across a letter from a factory worker named Václav Riha addressed to his mistress, Ana Maruscakova, a Lidice resident, with whom he was having an extramarital affair. A section of the letter said, “I had to do it. We shall not meet for a long time.” Gestapo officers interpreted this as a reference to Heydrich’s assassination.
‘Despite the lack of definitive evidence linking the residents of Lidice to any wrongdoing, Hitler gave Karl Hermann Frank the following orders:
- Execute all men.
- Transport all women to concentration camps.
- Collect the children, send the ones who could be adopted into German homes to SS families in Germany, and send the rest somewhere else.
- The village should be razed to the ground.’
The massacre
‘With orders from Frank, Security Police Chief Horst Böhme was tasked with the annihilation of the village of Lidice. Acting on suspicions that the residents were aiding local resistance, and because of the false association to Operation Anthropoid by the Riha letter, Böhme and his forces surrounded the village in the early hours of 10 June 1942, cutting off all avenues of escape.
‘All male residents of Lidice above the age of 16 endured a harrowing fate as they were systematically rounded up and transported to the Horák family farm on the village outskirts. To minimise the risk of ricochets of bullets, mattresses from nearby homes were taken and positioned against the wall of the Horáks’ barn. The executions began at approximately 7:00 am, initially in groups of five men. However, Böhme deemed the process too slow and ordered the execution of ten men at a time. The lifeless bodies were callously left where they fell, a macabre scene that persisted until the afternoon, claiming the lives of 173 men. Subsequently, 11 men who were absent from the village that day and eight men and seven women already under arrest, due to their connections with the Czechoslovak armies in exile, were arrested and executed. Miraculously, three male inhabitants survived the massacre, two of whom were in the Czechoslovak Air Force stationed in England at the time. The lone adult male from Lidice within Czechoslovakia who survived was František Saidl (1887–1961), the former deputy-mayor. Unaware of the atrocity during his four-year imprisonment, Saidl discovered the horrifying truth upon his return on 23 December 1942. Distraught by the revelation, he voluntarily turned himself in to SS officers in Kladno, confessing his Lidice connection and expressing approval of Heydrich’s assassination. Astonishingly, the officers dismissed him with laughter, and Saidl went on to survive the war.
‘A total of 203 women and 105 children from Lidice were initially taken to the village school and then detained in a grammar school in the nearby town of Kladno for three days. The children were separated from their mothers, and four pregnant women were sent to the hospital where Heydrich died, forced to undergo abortions before being dispatched to various concentration camps. On 12 June 1942, 184 women were loaded onto trucks, taken to Kladno railway station, and forced into a special passenger train guarded by an escort. The train halted on 14 June at the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where attempts to isolate the Lidice women were thwarted by other inmates. The women were compelled to work in leather processing, road building, textile, and ammunition factories.
‘Meanwhile, 88 Lidice children were transported to the former textile factory area in Gneisenau Street, Łódź. Their arrival, announced by a telegram from Horst Böhme’s Prague office, emphasised their minimal belongings, and no special care was deemed necessary. The children faced neglect, lack of hygiene, and illnesses as the camp management prohibited medical care. Seven children who were deemed racially suitable were handed over to SS families to be brought up as Germans. Lidice’s remaining children faced an uncertain fate due to the uproar, but in late June, SS official, and man in charge of the deportations of persecuted peoples to concentration camps, Adolf Eichmann ordered their massacre. On 2 July, the remaining 82 Lidice children were handed over to the Łódź Gestapo office, eventually meeting their tragic end in the Chelmno extermination camp, where they were gassed to death in gas vans. Out of the 105 Lidice children, 82 were murdered in Chełmno, six in German Lebensborn orphanages, and 17 miraculously returned home. At his infamous trial years later in 1961 in Israel, Eichmann would not be found guilty of these crimes, due to a lack of conclusive evidence. In total, 340 of Lidice’s 503 citizens had perished by the end of the war.’
The destruction of the Lidice
‘Following the Lidice massacre, the village was subjected to ruthless annihilation. Buildings were set on fire, and explosives were used to obliterate any remaining structures. Animals, both pets and beasts of burden, were slaughtered, and even the cemetery’s occupants were not spared; their remains were unearthed, looted for gold fillings and jewellery, and destroyed.
‘A 100-strong German work party was dispatched to eliminate all visible traces of the village, redirect the stream, and reconfigure the roads. The area was covered with topsoil, crops were planted, and a barbed-wire fence with warnings in Czech and German was erected, threatening anyone approaching with deadly consequences. Franz Treml, a collaborator with German intelligence and former Zeiss-Ikon shop owner in Prague, documented this process in a film, having transitioned into a film adviser for the Nazi Party after the occupation.’
Further reprisals
‘Further reprisals extended to the destruction of the small Czech village of Ležáky two weeks after Lidice. Gestapo agents discovered a radio transmitter there, leading to the execution of all 33 adults and the displacement of the children, who were either sent to concentration camps or “Aryanised.” The death toll resulting from these reprisals following Reinhard Heydrich’s assassination is estimated to exceed 1,300 people. This count encompasses not only relatives of partisans and their supporters but also Czech elites suspected of disloyalty and random victims similar to those in Lidice.’
International reaction
‘The Lidice massacre provoked global outrage and inspired remembrance initiatives worldwide. In Joliet, Illinois, an area named Lidice was established to honour the town, a concept endorsed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He remarked, “The Nazis wanted to erase the name Lidice forever, but instead of letting that happen, Lidice is being given a new life.” On 12 June 1942, US Secretary of State Cordell Hull denounced the massacre, labelling it the work of a “savage tribe” that had “shocked and outraged humanity.” Lidice became deeply ingrained in American culture, sparking Hollywood films and a book-length poem titled “The Murder of Lidice,” which received a global radio broadcast. Poet Carl Sandburg also paid tribute to the slain village in a piece for The Washington Post.
‘In Britain, in the town of Stoke-on-Trent, local doctor Barnett Stross and the North Staffordshire Miners’ Federation spearheaded a compassionate response to the atrocity in Lidice. Initiating the “Lidice Shall Live” campaign on 6 September 1942, at a significant gathering in the Victoria Hall, Hanley, they defiantly named it in direct opposition to Adolf Hitler’s proclamation that “Lidice Shall Die.”
‘The campaign, aimed at reconstructing Lidice, successfully raised £32,000, with a significant portion generously contributed by miners who dedicated a portion of their earnings. Stoke-on-Trent City Council takes pride in the city’s role in rebuilding the mining village of Lidice. At the inaugural Lidice Shall Live campaign meeting, Dr. Benes, the Czech President in exile, declared, “This meeting has made it clear that Lidice has not died; it lives on in the hearts of the people of Stoke-on-Trent at least. From now on, Stoke-on-Trent will live forever in the heart of every Czech citizen. Every year on 10 June, to commemorate the Lidice atrocity and to symbolise Stoke-on-Trent’s continuing friendship with the village, the Czech flag is raised above Stoke-on-Trent’s town hall.’
Impact on the survivors and their families
‘After years of searching, 17 children given to German families were located and reunited with their relatives. These children, affected by the Lidice tragedy, had to relearn the Czech language. Members of Lidice, Josef Horák and Josef Stríbrný, were profoundly saddened by the events and deaths of their family members, learning about it through radio broadcasts in Great Britain. Josef Horák, haunted by guilt over Lidice’s burning, faced difficulties upon his return, with some Lidice women unfairly blaming him for the tragedy.
‘Historian Elizabeth White from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum highlights the challenges in rehabilitating the children. Many selected for Germanization, taken at a young age, had forgotten their Czech heritage. White explains, “When [the children] were found and sent back, they didn’t remember how to speak Czech. One girl’s mother survived Ravensbrück but had tuberculosis and died four months after she came back. At first when they spoke, they had to use a translator.
Rebuilding of Lidice
‘Following the liberation of Czechoslovakia in May 1945, The Society for Rebuilding Lidice was established. Notably, on 10 June 1945, the Czechoslovakian government declared its commitment to rebuilding Lidice. Construction of the new town near the site of the old one’s destruction began in 1948. The ancient ruins were repurposed into a museum and memorial site by the government, and a few survivors of Lidice’s devastation relocated to the new town.
‘In May 1948, the construction of the new Lidice commenced near the old village, featuring 150 houses, a town hall, a post office, a community centre, and a small shopping area. Presently, it has expanded significantly.
‘The area where the old village once stood has been transformed into a memorial park housing a mass grave for the men who were killed and a museum. The rose garden, named The Garden of Peace and Friendship, serves as a symbolic link between the vanished old village and the thriving new one.’
Punishment of the perpetrators
‘The Nazis’ film depicting the demolition of Lidice was presented at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, serving as evidence of the brutality of the Nazi regime. The Allied prosecutors used the destruction of Lidice as a stark illustration of Nazi war crimes.
‘Karl Hermann Frank, the man who had ordered Lidice’s destruction, was captured and tried by the Prague People’s Court in 1946. His crimes, including the annihilation of Ležáky and Lidice, were deemed particularly serious since he had been a citizen of Czechoslovakia before Nazi Germany’s occupation of the country in 1938–1939. Frank was found guilty of numerous war crimes committed during the conflict and was sentenced to death by hanging, which was carried out on 22 May 1946.’
Legacy
‘Since 1967, Lidice has hosted the International Children’s Exhibition of Fine Arts: Lidice, an annual contest where young people worldwide share art on themes like biodiversity, cultural heritage, and education. The Lidice massacre, recognized as a global symbol of human suffering, prompted the creation of this exhibition by Sharon Valášek, the Mid-West honorary consul to the Czech Republic. The initiative aims to foster reflection on human suffering in general, extending beyond the events in Lidice.
‘In 1980, sculptor Marie Uchytilová began work on a memorial not only to honour local children lost in the camps but also to symbolise the “13 million child victims of World War II.” The memorial, featuring statues rotated 180 degrees, was eventually erected in 2000.
‘Before we wrap up, it’s worth noting that the Lidice tragedy has not only been etched into history books but has also found its way onto the cinematic screen. In 2011, a film aptly titled “Lidice” was released, shedding light on this horrific tragedy, which is etched into Czech collective memory. While art often serves as a powerful medium for storytelling, this film, in particular, captures the emotions and historical significance of Lidice, allowing audiences to connect with the narrative in a visceral way. It is available on streaming services in English as either “The Butcher of Prague” or “The Fall of Innocents.”
Outro
‘As we wrap up our episode on the Lidice massacre, it’s a sombre moment to reflect on the human cost of conflict and the indomitable spirit of those who rebuild in the face of devastation. Lidice’s story is a stark reminder of the enduring impact of historical tragedies.
‘As we step away from this chapter, let’s not forget the lives lost and the communities forever changed. History has much to teach us, and Lidice is a lesson in resilience and remembrance. That’s all for now.
‘Thanks for joining me, and see you next time. Goodbye.’