Lidice massacre

The Lidice massacre was the complete destruction of the village of Lidice in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now the Czech Republic, in June 1942 on orders from Adolf Hitler and the successor of the ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich Himmler, Kurt Daulege.

In reprisal for the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich in the late spring of 1942, all 173 men from the village who were over 15 years of age were executed on 10 June 1942. A further 11 men from the village who were not present at the time were later arrested and executed soon afterwards, along with several others who were already under arrest. Out of a total 503 inhabitants, 307 women and children were sent to a makeshift detention center in a Kladno school. Of these, 184 women and 88 children were deported to concentration camps; 7 children who were considered racially suitable and thus eligible for Germanisation were handed over to SS families, and the rest were sent to the Chełmno extermination camp, where they were gassed to death.

The Associated Press, quoting German radio transmissions which it received in New York, said: "All male grownups of the town were shot, while the women were placed in a concentration camp, and the children were entrusted to appropriate educational institutions." Approximately 340 people from Lidice were murdered in the German reprisal (192 men, 60 women and 88 children). After the war ended, only 143 women and 17 children returned.Jan Kaplan and Krystyna Nosarzewska, ''Prague: The Turbulent Century'' p. 241

Nazi propaganda openly and proudly announced the events at Lidice in direct contrast to the disinformation and secrecy involved with other crimes against civilian populations, with intense outrage occurring among Allied nations and particularly Anglosphere countries. The history has been depicted in multiple forms of media since the end of WWII, examples including the internationally known drama film ''Operation Daybreak'' and the Bohuslav Martinů composed orchestral work ''Memorial to Lidice''.

Background

Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich

From 27 September 1941, SS-''Obergruppenführer'' and General of Police Reinhard Heydrich had been acting as ''Reichsprotektor'' of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.Jan Kaplan and Krystyna Nosarzewska, ''Prague: The Turbulent Century'' p. 214 This area of the former state of Czechoslovakia had been occupied by Nazi Germany since 5 April 1939.

On the morning of 27 May 1942, Heydrich was being driven from his country villa at Panenské Břežany to his office at Prague Castle. When he reached the Kobylisy area of Prague, his car was attacked (on behalf of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile) by the Slovak and Czech soldiers Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. These men, who had been part of a team trained in Great Britain, had parachuted into Bohemia in December 1941 as part of Operation Anthropoid.

After Gabčík's Sten gun jammed, Heydrich ordered his driver, SS-''Oberscharführer'' Klein, to stop the car. When Heydrich stood up to shoot Gabčík, Kubiš threw a modified anti-tank grenade at Heydrich's car. The resulting explosion wounded both Heydrich and Kubiš. Heydrich sent Klein to chase Gabčík on foot and, in an exchange of fire, Gabčík shot Klein in the leg below the knee. Kubiš and Gabčík managed to escape the scene. A Czech woman went to Heydrich's aid and flagged down a delivery van. He was placed on his stomach in the back of the van and taken to the emergency room at Bulovka Hospital. A splenectomy was performed, and the chest wound, left lung, and diaphragm were all debrided. Himmler ordered Karl Gebhardt to fly to Prague to assume care. Despite a fever, Heydrich's recovery appeared to progress well. Hitler's personal doctor Theodor Morell suggested the use of the new antibacterial drug sulfonamide, but Gebhardt thought that Heydrich would recover and declined the suggestion. On 4 June Heydrich died from septicaemia caused by pieces of horse hair from the upholstery and his clothing entering his body when the bomb exploded.

Reprisals

Late in the afternoon of 27 May, SS-''Gruppenführer'' Karl Hermann Frank proclaimed a state of emergency and placed a curfew in Prague.Jan Kaplan and Krystyna Nosarzewska, ''Prague: The Turbulent Century'' p. 239 Anyone who helped the attackers was to be executed along with their families. A search involving 21,000 men began and 36,000 houses were checked. By 4 June, 157 people had been executed as a result of the reprisals but the assassins had not been found and no information was forthcoming.

The eulogies at Heydrich's funeral in Berlin were not yet over when, on 9 June, the decision was made to "make up for his death". Frank, Secretary of State for the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, reported from Berlin that the ''Führer'' had commanded the following concerning any village found to have harbored Heydrich's killers:Jan Kaplan and Krystyna Nosarzewska, ''Prague: The Turbulent Century'' p. 246

#Execute all men
#Transport all women to a concentration camp
#Gather the children suitable for Germanisation, then place them in SS families in the Reich and bring the rest of the children up in other ways
#Burn down the village and level it entirely

Massacre

Men

Horst Böhme, the SiPo chief for the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, immediately acted on the orders. Members of the ''Ordnungspolizei'' and SD (''Sicherheitsdienst'') surrounded the village of Lidice, blocking all avenues of escape. The Nazi regime chose this village because its residents were suspected of harbouring local resistance partisans and were falsely associated with aiding Operation Anthropoid team members.

All men of the village were rounded up and taken to the farm of the Horák family on the edge of the village. Mattresses were taken from neighbouring houses where they were stood up against the wall of the Horáks' barn to prevent ricochets. The shooting of the men commenced at about 7:00 am. At first the men were shot in groups of five, but Böhme thought the executions were proceeding too slowly and ordered that ten men be shot at a time. The dead were left lying where they fell. This continued until the afternoon hours when there were 173 dead. Another 11 men who were not in the village that day were arrested and murdered soon afterwards as were eight men and seven women already under arrest because they had relations serving with the Czechoslovak armies in exile in the United Kingdom. Only three male inhabitants of the village survived the massacre, two of whom were in the Czechoslovak Air Force and stationed in England at the time. The only adult man from Lidice actually in Czechoslovakia who survived this atrocity was František Saidl (1887–1961), the former deputy-mayor of Lidice who had been arrested at the end of 1938 because on 19 December 1938 he accidentally killed his son Eduard Saidl. He was imprisoned for four years and had no idea about this massacre. He found out when he returned home on 23 December 1942. Upon discovering the massacre, he was so distraught he turned himself in to SS officers in the nearby town of Kladno, confessed to being from Lidice, and even said he approved of the assassination of Heydrich. Despite confirming his identity, the SS officers simply laughed at him and turned him away, and he went on to survive the war.

Women and children

A total of 203 women and 105 children were first taken to Lidice village school, then the nearby town of Kladno and detained in the grammar school for three days. The children were separated from their mothers and four pregnant women were sent to the same hospital where Heydrich died, forced to undergo abortions and then sent to different concentration camps. On 12 June 1942, 184 women of Lidice were loaded on trucks, driven to Kladno railway station and forced into a special passenger train guarded by an escort. On the morning of 14 June, the train halted on a railway siding at the concentration camp at Ravensbrück. The camp authorities tried to keep the Lidice women isolated, but were prevented from doing so by other inmates. The women were forced to work in leather processing, road building, textile and ammunition factories.

Eighty-eight Lidice children were transported to the area of the former textile factory in Gneisenau Street in Łódź. Their arrival was announced by a telegram from Horst Böhme's Prague office which ended with: ''the children are only bringing what they wear. No special care is desirable.'' The care was minimal and they suffered from a lack of hygiene and from illnesses. By order of the camp management, no medical care was given to the children. Shortly after their arrival in Łódź, officials from the Central Race and Settlement branch chose seven children for Germanisation.Lynn H. Nicholas, ''Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web'' p 254 The few children considered racially suitable for Germanisation were handed over to SS families.

The furor over Lidice caused some hesitation over the fate of the remaining children but in late June Adolf Eichmann