The Massacre at Lidice

For centuries Lidice was an ordinary agricultural village, which belonged to the Buštehrad manor, located in a shallow valley of the Lidice Creek in the Kladno district sone 20 km west of Prague. The village is today a quiet town that lies adjacent to valleys and  of meadows, with a few stone ruins of a farmhouse and church, and a striking bronze sculpture of children. This is the site of the original village, and what happened here  on June 10th, 1942, shocked the entire world.

The Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia had tragic consequences for Lidice. In order to suppress the growing anti-Fascist resistance movement, security police chief SS Obergruppenfuhrer - Reinherd Heydrich was appointed deputy Reichs-protektor in September 1941. During his short reign of terror, 5000 anti-Fascist fighters and their helpers were imprisoned.

The courts working under martial law were kept busy and the Nazis even had people summarily executed without a trial in order to spread fear throughout the country. So many people throughout the Sudetenland died  on the scaffold from Heydrich' s persecution, that he earned himself the nickname the "Hangman".

Edvard Beneš, the leader of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, together with František Moravec, head of Czechoslovak military intelligence, organized and coordinated a resistance network. Hácha, Prime Minister Eliáš, and the Czech resistance acknowledged Beneš's leadership. Active collaboration between London and the Czechoslovak home front was maintained throughout the war years.

The most significant act of resistance was the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich during a mission codenamed: Operation Anthropoid. Two Czech patriots, Jan Kubis and Joseph Gabcik, serving with the Polish forces in Britain, volunteered to be dropped by parachute near Prague.

Their mission, to assassinate SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. The ambush took place on May 27, 1942, as Heydrich drove to his office. Severely wounded, he was rushed to Bulovka Hospital where he died eight days later.

Soon after his death, the Nazi reprisals began when an enraged Hitler ordered Heydrich's underling SS Gruppenführer Karl Hermann Frank to initiate  mass executions of the Czech populace,  but Frank persuaded him first to search for the assassins.