There is quiet and peace in the green meadow on a not-too-hot summer’s day. The grass now covers the valley among gently rolling hills, with only a few stones marking departed buildings poking through. A welcome breeze finds its way through the leafy trees. The world, meaning the bustling Czech capital of Prague only an hour or so from this spot, seems part of another universe. But this is where the village of Lidice once stood. The village no longer stands.
At one corner of the meadow, I find what I have been looking for: the life-size statues, 82 of them, representing the children killed in the Nazi revenge during World War II. These heartbreaking statues, village kids gathered as though waiting for their fate, is credited to a Czech sculptor and professor named Maria Uchytilova, though her husband finished the piece years after her death in late 1989. She had spent the final two decades of her life working on the project, beginning in 1969 – giving the world an emotional reminder of the evils done in the name of power.
I had the valley and meadow mostly to myself that afternoon. Just me and those 82 children. There were only a handful of tourists and locals spread around, looking small in the leafy distance. I was surprised not to find tour buses parked out front, once I’d caught the subway from near my Prague hotel, then waded through crowds on the street to find the public bus. I was surprised but also relieved. Somehow what I was feeling demanded that I be alone.
Lidice was a Czech village of men, women and children. Homes and
businesses. Small farms. A church from the 14th century. Lidice was a village until June 10, 1942, when Hitler ordered his Gestapo to make the place not exist anymore. And how he made that decision is a piece of history.
When the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939, Hitler imposed a “Protectorate” – one of the earliest examples of Nazi language abuse. Other than sparing Prague (as even the Russians would do at the end of the Cold War four decades later), very little about Czechoslovakia would be protected in the coming years. In a sense, the very concept started the beginning of the end for the men, women and children of Lidice. It brought in the Protektor in 1941, the man who would set the story in dreadful motion.
During his time “protecting” the Czech people at the behest of Hitler, Reinhard Heydrich earned many nicknames – none of them affectionate. Perhaps the one that tops everyone’s list for clarity is “The Butcher of Prague.” Before his assassination in 1942, Heydrich not only impressed his boss with the way he put down dissent but with his far-reaching beliefs about racial and national purity. Many consider him to be a primary architect of the Holocaust.
Hitler’s reactions to the Heydrich assassination by members of a Czech resistance meet the two most basic components of terrorism – killing people perceived as any form of potential threat and frightening the rest into not becoming such people. By the end of the war, all sides would have come to understand the imposing of death on civilians and destruction on property as a powerful way to break the enemy’s will. Hitler’s first reaction was that the men and women who conspired to kill his Protektor would be hunted down and killed. But that was only the beginning.
The manhunt was nationwide. Information was required, and the Gestapo certainly knew how to get information. Torture was applied to any Czechs who seemed they might possess a puzzle piece, and many were simply executed – as was the threat made public for anyone harboring almost anything about the fugitives. In all, some 36,000 homes were searched by upwards of 21,000 German soldiers. The destruction of Lidice, and shortly thereafter another village called Lezaky, was planned as part of the manhunt. No evidence ever linked either village to any aspect of the conspiracy.
When the Gestapo moved against Lidice on June 10, 1942, all 173 men over the age of 15 were gathered and gunned down. Another eleven men missing that day were killed later. In all, 184 women and 88 children were deported to concentration camps, with a few children later deemed Aryan enough in appearance handed over to German officers’ families.
In one of the short films shown in the Lidice museum, elderly versions of these children share the experience of growing up as Germans and only later learning the truth. The women and 82 of the children were sent to the Chelmno extermination camp, never to return. Bodies of villagers who’d already passed away were dug up and mutilated. Even the animals of Lidice, household pets and beasts of burden alike, were slaughtered amidst the Nazi frenzy.
Stranger still, the Nazis brought in a filmmaker, a collaborator who had run a camera shop in Prague, to record every step of the bloody process. Unlike many who commit atrocities, the Nazis wanted to make sure every single Czech knew exactly what had happened to Lidice.
