When Reinhard Heydrich, Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, died in a Prague hospital on June 4, 1942, the Nazi authorities decided to respond with terror on an unprecedented scale. The small village of Lidice became the victim of their revenge, despite its inhabitants having no connection to the assassination. In a single night, all adult men were killed, while women and children were dispersed to concentration camps and German families.
Nazi Revenge
At the end of May 1942, two Czech fighters trained in Great Britain carried out Operation Anthropoid. On a street in Prague, they attacked a car carrying Heydrich, one of the most powerful men in the Nazi terror apparatus. A grenade thrown under the vehicle caused severe internal injuries to the Protector, which, despite immediate surgery, proved fatal.
Heydrich was the architect of numerous criminal programs and enjoyed particular trust from the highest authorities of the Reich. His death enraged Berlin, leading to immediate demands for bloody retribution.
The Germans decided to punish all of Czech society to crush any thought of resistance. They needed a spectacular act of revenge that would terrify the occupied population.
The choice fell on Lidice, located near Prague. The decision was made by Karl Hermann Frank, State Secretary to the Protector, who himself hoped to succeed Heydrich. The village had no proven connection to the assassins. However, Frank needed a victim, and Lidice was perfectly suited for a show pacification intended to break the spirit of the Czech nation.
Pacification and Executions
On the evening of June 9, 1942, German troops surrounded the village with a tight cordon. The mayor was forced to collect all valuables from the inhabitants, which were immediately confiscated. Men over fifteen were driven from their homes and gathered in one place, while women and children were locked in the school building.
The next day, Karl Hermann Frank personally arrived in Lidice to oversee the execution. The men were divided into small groups and led to the wall of a barn, where a firing squad awaited. The bodies of those murdered were not removed, and subsequent condemned men were forced to stand before the corpses of their neighbors and relatives. The executioners stepped back a pace each time, making room for the next victims.
Among the 173 men shot was the local priest, Josef Štemberka. The clergyman had been outside the village that day and was secretly warned not to return. Nevertheless, he consciously went to Lidice, wishing to die alongside his parishioners.
The youngest execution victim, Josef Hroník, was not yet fifteen. The shootings lasted many hours, concluding only on the afternoon of June 10.
Erased from Memory
After the massacre of the men, the fate of the women and children remained uncertain for a short while. They were led from the school building and transported to nearby Kladno. Most women ended up in concentration camps, where many lost their lives. Most of the children were sent to special centers, and a few deemed suitable for Germanization were placed with German families or in an orphanage.
The Germans did not stop at exterminating the villagers. Every building in Lidice was set on fire or blown up. The church and school were demolished, every house razed to the ground. The local cemetery was devastated, orchards and trees lining the roads were uprooted. The course of the stream through the village was even altered, and the pond completely filled in.
The aim of this systematic destruction was to completely erase Lidice from both the map and human memory. The name of the village was to disappear as if the place had never existed. After the war, Lidice was rebuilt 300 meters from the original site, which was transformed into a memorial and museum. 143 surviving women and only 17 children, found after years of dispersion across Europe, returned to the new village.
Autor
Margot Cleverly
Margot's journey into women's history began with a box of forgotten letters in a Cambridge archive – suffragettes whose voices had been silenced for over a century. Since then, she's been on a mission to uncover the stories history overlooked.
What she writes about: Queens who ruled from the shadows. Scientists whose male colleagues took credit. Revolutionaries who risked everything. But also ordinary women – those who survived wars, raised families through upheaval, and shaped their communities in ways no one bothered to record.
Margot turns historical figures into real people. She writes with warmth and detail, making centuries-old stories feel surprisingly relevant. Rigorous research meets accessible storytelling – no dusty academic jargon, just compelling narratives backed by solid facts.
When she's not writing, you'll find her in regional archives, collecting oral histories, or visiting sites connected to the women she writes about.