Starting on 9th June 1942, German police and SS officials liquidated the Czech village



Starting on 9th June 1942, German police and SS officials liquidated the Czech village of Lidice as part of reprisals for the assassination of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak resistance operatives.

Heydrich, a senior Nazi official, had been appointed Acting-Protector of German-occupied Bohemia and Moravia in September 1941, where he earned the nickname "Butcher of Prague" for his brutality. 

On 27th May 1942, as he was being driven through Prague in his open-roofed car, he was mortally wounded in an attack by two exiled Czechoslovak soldiers, who had been trained in Britain for the mission. He died eight days later.

An outraged Adolf Hitler demanded the murder of up to 10,000 Czechs as revenge for the attack but was dissuaded by the Minister of State for Bohemia and Moravia, Karl Hermann Frank, who argued that this type of reprisal might interfere with long-term economic and political plans for the region. Nonetheless, Frank imposed martial law and initiated a manhunt for the assassins. 

On the night of 9th June, German police and SS officials surrounded Lidice, whose inhabitants were falsely accused of having connections to the assassins. All 173 males over the age of 16 were shot, while 203 women and 105 children were sent to a makeshift detention centre.

 Of these, 184 women and 88 children were deported to concentration camps, while seven children who were considered racially suitable were handed over to SS families to be brought up as Germans. The remaining children were eventually exterminated, while 53 of the women would eventually die in concentration camps. The village was razed to the ground.

Unlike other massacres in occupied Europe which were kept secret, the events at Lidice were proudly announced by Nazi propaganda to show the repercussions of resisting German rule. Two weeks later, the small village of Ležáky suffered a similar fate after a radio transmitter was discovered there. 

The total death toll resulting from the effort to avenge the death of Heydrich is estimated at over 1,300 people. In 1948, Lidice was rebuilt near the site of the original village, the ruins of which have since been turned into a museum and memorial site.

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