Features

Czech Republic - Lidice: never forget

by Jo Hiller

Lidice - a place not to be forgotten

As with many villages in Europe with poignant World War II connections, Lidice is not a place that features in many traveller's plans.

I knew nothing about Lidice, but felt compelled to go there when I was in the Czech Republic, having heard a vague reference to it on a television programme before I went.

Its poignancy stems from its fairly recent history - it was razed to the ground by the Nazis, who believed that the man who assassinated one of their leaders, Reinhard Heydrich, lived in Lidice at the time. On the evening of 9th June 1942 German soldiers inflicted a bloody revenge by shooting all of Lidice's male inhabitants and deporting all its women to concentration camps. The children, all of whom were deemed suitable for ‘Germanisation’, were sent to be educated with SS families in the Third Reich. At that precise moment, Lidice was wiped off the map.

It is 12 miles northwest of Prague and easy to reach by local buses which run regularly from Praha – Dejvice station. The journey only takes about 30 minutes. Today it looks fairly unremarkable, like any other ‘modern’ village, but that is where the similarity ends.

At the end of the main street there is a small museum next to a large octagonal memorial monument. Here, I was met at the entrance by an elderly lady who rolled back her sleeve to reveal a tattooed number on her arm, she was one of the fortunate ones to have survived Auschwitz Birkenau, and she couldn’t speak English apart from the words ‘Never Forget’…and I haven’t.

She, and the film footage, along with the bits and pieces of memorabilia that were found in the ashes made a lasting impression on me. A charred photo, a child’s ripped shoe, an identity card with a bullet hole in it, and a bent fork were just a few of the items on display; not much had been saved that night as people were dragged from their houses without warning.

I spent time walking around the area where the old village once stood. All that remains are the foundations of the school, a large wooden cross and a common grave.

And now? We think that life is indestructible but it is so fragile. The new village eventually emerged from the ashes, but so catastrophic were the effects of the Nazi massacre, that this new village had to wait 30 years before a generation of parents grew up and had children for whom to open a nursery school.