Lidice

Lidice, village, Czech Republic, just northwest of Prague. Before World War II it was a mining settlement of the Kladno coal basin and had a population of about 450. Lidice was “liquidated” by German armed forces as part of a massive reprisal for the death of Reinhard Heydrich, the deputy leader of the SS responsible for organizing the Holocaust during the early years of World War II, who was attacked by Czech underground fighters on May 27, 1942.

On June 9, five days after Heydrich died of his injuries, the SS rounded up Lidice’s inhabitants. The 172 men were shot on June 10. The women, except for 7 who were shot on the spot or who had been shot earlier trying to flee, were transported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where 49 died (7 by gas) and 3 “disappeared.” The 90 children, after one had been shot running away, were screened and found “racially pure” and were dispersed through Germany to be renamed and raised as Germans. Local miners (19 men) who were missed on the first round were executed later in Prague. When the massacre and deportation were complete, the SS burned Lidice, dynamited what was left standing, and leveled the debris.

Nazi forces carried out an equally savage attack—albeit on a larger scale—on the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane two years to the day after the Lidice massacre.

In 1947 a new Lidice village site was designated nearby. A museum, with a monument and an international rose garden, marks the site of the original village.