Lidice. Never Forget.

Reinhard Heydrich and Karl Hermann Frank.

Text and Illustration: HOLOCAUST EDUCATION AND ARCHIVE RESEARCH TEAM

The Massacre at Lidice.

On 10 June 1942, the German government announced that it had destroyed the small village of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, killing every adult male and some fifty-two women.

All surviving women and children were then deported to Concentration Camps, or, if found suitable to be "Germanised", sent to The Greater Reich. The Nazis then proudly proclaimed that the village of Lidice, its residents, and its very name, were now forever blotted from memory.

The most significant act of Czech resistance was the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich during a mission, code-named "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 227 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.

The Germans raided 5,000 towns and villages arresting some 3,180 people, 1,344 were sentenced to be executed. This number however was far too small for Adolf Hitler, who ordered severe reprisals threatening to kill 30,000 Czechs.

Thankfully for many Czech civilians, Hitler's threat never materialised, however. Karl Hermann Frank, now Secretary of State for the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, reported from Berlin that the Führer had commanded the following concerning any village implicated in the Heydrich assassination:

Members of the Schutzpolizei pose in front of the Horak family farm after its destruction.

Illustration: HOLOCAUST EDUCATION AND ARCHIVE RESEARCH TEAM

All adult males were to be executed.

All woman to be immediately

transported to Concentration Camps.

All children, suitable for "Germanising", 

were to be placed with SS families in The Reich

and raised as Germans.

The village was to be destroyed and the area levelled.

This Article is taken from, and can be read in full at,

HOLOCAUST EDUCATION AND ARCHIVE RESEARCH TEAM

Men massacred in the village of Lidice, 10 June 1942.

Picture taken by a German soldier and initially kept by Gestapo.

Downloaded from 

http://www.lidice-memorial.cz/ (

Lidice Memorial).

Purpose of use: To Illustrate crime for which the subject of the Article was executed by hanging.

Replaceable: Impossible.

(Wikipedia)