Lidice — a village destroyed in Nazi reprisals
Story period: village before 1942 · destroyed 10 June 1942 · postwar remembrance
Location: historical Lidice near Kladno; today’s memorial grounds
Lidice was a living village near Kladno, not an ANTHROPOID base. Following the attack on Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazis destroyed it on 10 June 1942 as a reprisal, using a false investigative lead as their pretext. They murdered 173 men at Horák’s farm, deported the women and separated their children from them. Old Lidice remains a memorial landscape; a new village was built beside it after the war.
Sources, licences and acknowledgements
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1993-020-26A · photographer unknown · Original · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE
Uses the previously cropped Commons version; Chrona variants are resized and compressed. Derived images retain CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.
The village before destruction
before June 1942
Behind the name Lidice were a real village and its inhabitants.
Lidice housed mining families and other workers, with a school, church and local associations. Atentát records 483 inhabitants and 96 houses. The Nazis destroyed neither a military camp nor a known parachutist refuge, but an ordinary village with homes and public life. That distinction is essential to understanding the reprisal.
A letter and a false lead
3–9 June 1942
A letter investigation connected Lidice with an unsubstantiated suspicion.
A letter found in Slaný led the Gestapo to the families of Lidice-born Josef Horák and Josef Stříbrný, who served in the British air force. The investigation produced no evidence that the village had participated in ANTHROPOID or the attack on Heydrich. Nevertheless, it was selected for exemplary punishment.
The destruction of old Lidice
9–10 June 1942
The Nazis separated the inhabitants and burned the village.
German forces surrounded Lidice during the night of 9–10 June. Men and women were separated. On 10 June, 173 men were shot in Horák’s farm garden. Houses were burned, followed by efforts to erase the village’s physical presence from the landscape. This was a Nazi reprisal after the attack, not an action by the parachutists.
The women and children
from June 1942
The violence continued after their removal from the village.
The women of Lidice were deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp. The Nazis separated the children from them and murdered most of the children. The Lidice Memorial records that 82 children from Lidice were murdered at Chełmno.
New Lidice and a place of remembrance
after 1945
The new village was built beside the destroyed one, not over it.
After the war, Lidice was rebuilt near the original village. Old Lidice’s footprint remained a memorial landscape, recalling not just one date but the loss of homes, families and community life. The map must therefore distinguish the historical village from today’s settlement.
The story concerns the destroyed village and present memorial grounds, not the centre of rebuilt Lidice. The historical village’s geometry and Horák’s farm garden have not been verified here; no exact event point is asserted.
Explore further
- The Heydrich Terror
Lidice’s destruction formed part of the repression after Heydrich was wounded
- The bend below Vychovatelna
the attack became a pretext for Nazi reprisals; the village was not part of the operation
- Ležáky
another destroyed settlement, with a different connection to SILVER A