Another Nazi Massacre

---

About a half hour drive out of Prague is Lidice. Lidice is a village that was entirely destroyed by Nazi soldiers in 1942 in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich by members of the Czech Resistance.

In the summer of 1942 two Czech soldiers who had been trained in Britain parachuted into Bohemia which was at the time occupied by the Nazis. These two men attacked and killed Reinhard Heydrich as he was being driven to his office in Prague. They escaped capture for several weeks before finally being discovered hiding in the catacombs beneath a church in Prague. Beneath the church they fought Nazi soldiers for hours before eventually committing suicide when it was apparent they would not escape.

In the meantime Hitler decided he would try and send a message to the Czech people to force them not to resist the Nazi occupation. So, Hitler ordered his troops to enter the village of Lidice, kill every male aged at least 16 years, send the women of the village to concentration camps, send suitable children to live with SS families for Germanization, send the remaining children to concentration camps, destroy every building, burn all the fields, and desecrate all the graves. In June 1942 the Nazis entered Lidice and systematically destroyed the village.

Now there is a memorial and a small museum where Lidice once stood. When we arrived there it was a cold and snowy day and we were the only visitors at the museum. I guess this served to underscore the sadness of the scene that took place there 65 years earlier. We walked around and took a few pictures before heading back to Prague in the afternoon.

---