Lidice massacre

The Lidice massacre was a complete destruction of the village of Lidice, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now in the Czech Republic, in June 1942 on orders from Adolf Hitler and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. In reprisal for the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich in the late spring of 1942, all 173 men over 15 years of age from the village were executed on 10 June 1942. Another 11 men who were not in the village were arrested and executed soon afterwards, along with several others already under arrest. The 184 women and 88 children were deported to concentration camps; a few children considered racially suitable for Germanisation were handed over to SS families and the rest were sent to the Chełmno extermination camp where they were gassed to death. The Associated Press, quoting German radio received in New York, said: "All male grownups of the town were shot, while the women were placed in a concentration camp, and the children were entrusted to appropriate educational institutions." About 340 people from Lidice died because of the German reprisal (192 men, 60 women and 88 children) and after the war ended, only 153 women and 17 children returned.

From 27 September 1941, SS-Obergruppenführer and General of Police Reinhard Heydrich had been Acting Reichsprotektor of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This area of the former Czechoslovakia had been occupied by Nazi Germany since 5 April 1939.

On the morning of 27 May 1942, Heydrich was being driven from his country villa at Panenské Břežany to his office at Prague Castle. When he reached the Kobylisy area of Prague, his car was attacked (on behalf of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile) by the Slovak and Czech soldiers Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. These men, who had been part of a team trained in Great Britain, had parachuted into Bohemia in December 1941 as part of Operation Anthropoid. After Gabčík's Sten gun jammed, Heydrich ordered his driver, SS-Oberscharführer Klein, to stop the car. When Heydrich stood up to shoot Gabčík, Kubiš threw a modified anti-tank grenade at Heydrich's car. The explosion wounded Heydrich and Kubiš. Heydrich sent his driver, Klein, to chase Gabčík on foot and in an exchange of fire, Gabčík shot Klein in the leg, below the knee. Kubiš and Gabčík managed to escape the scene. On 4 June Heydrich, having refused to be operated on by non-Germans, died in Bulovka Hospital in Prague from septicaemia caused by pieces of upholstery and his clothing entering his body when the bomb exploded.

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