Editing Lidice massacre (section)

==Massacre==

===Men===
[[Horst Böhme (SS officer)|Horst Böhme]], the [[Sicherheitspolizei|SiPo]] chief for the [[Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia]], immediately acted on the orders.{{sfn|Gerwarth|2011|p=280}} Members of the ''[[Ordnungspolizei]]'' and SD (''[[Sicherheitsdienst]]'') surrounded the village of Lidice, blocking all avenues of escape.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.welt.de/kultur/history/article106440451/Nicht-die-SS-Polizisten-mordeten-in-Lidice.html |title=NS-Massaker : Nicht die SS, Polizisten mordeten in Lidice – Nachrichten Kultur – Geschichte |publisher=Welt.de |access-date=2013-03-28 |newspaper=Die Welt |date=2012-06-08 |last1=Kellerhoff |first1=Sven Felix |archive-date=2013-04-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130410075114/http://www.welt.de/kultur/history/article106440451/Nicht-die-SS-Polizisten-mordeten-in-Lidice.html |url-status=live }}</ref> The Nazi regime chose this village because its residents were suspected of harbouring local resistance partisans and were associated with aiding Operation Anthropoid team members.<ref>Williamson, Gordon, ''Loyalty is my Honor'' p. 87</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19480624&id=1T4aAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FyUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4604,4187475&hl=fr|title=The Love Letter That destroyed Lidice|last=Wechsberg|first=Joseph|date=24 June 1948|work=The Milwaukee Journal|page=20|access-date=25 May 2016|via=Google News Archive}}{{Dead link|date=September 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

[[File:Lidice - pietni akt.jpg|thumb|Post-war memorial ceremony to honour victims]]
All men of the village were rounded up and taken to the farm of the Horák family on the edge of the village. Mattresses were taken from neighbouring houses where they were stood up against the wall of the Horáks' barn to prevent ricochets.<ref name="Kaplan246"/> The shooting of the men commenced at about 7:00&nbsp;am. At first the men were shot in groups of five, but Böhme thought the executions were proceeding too slowly and ordered that ten men be shot at a time. The dead were left lying where they fell. This continued until the afternoon hours when there were 173 dead.<ref name="Kaplan239"/> Another 11 men who were not in the village that day were arrested and murdered soon afterwards as were eight men and seven women already under arrest because they had relations serving with the [[Czechoslovak armies in exile]] in the United Kingdom.<ref name="Kaplan246"/>  Only three male inhabitants of the village survived the massacre, two of whom were in the [[Czechoslovak Air Force]] and stationed in England at the time.<ref name="The Lidice massacre after 65 years">{{Cite web|url = https://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/the-lidice-massacre-after-65-years|title = The Lidice massacre after 65 years|date = 8 June 2007|access-date = 11 July 2019|archive-date = 15 May 2018|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180515235441/http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/the-lidice-massacre-after-65-years|url-status = live}}</ref> The only adult man from Lidice actually in Czechoslovakia who survived this atrocity was František Saidl (1887–1961), the former deputy-mayor of Lidice who had been arrested at the end of 1938 because on 19 December 1938 he accidentally killed his son Eduard Saidl. He was imprisoned for four years and had no idea about this massacre. He found out when he returned home on 23 December 1942.  Upon discovering the massacre, he was so distraught he turned himself in to SS officers in the nearby town of Kladno, confessed to being from Lidice, and even said he approved of the assassination of Heydrich.  Despite confirming his identity, the SS officers simply laughed at him and turned him away, and he went on to survive the war.<ref name="The Lidice massacre after 65 years"/>

===Women and children===
[[File:Maria Doležalová testifies at the RuSHA trial.jpg|thumb|left|Marie Šupíková<!--Q95401481-->, one of the children kidnapped from Lidice, testifies at the [[RuSHA trial]]]]
[[File:Lidice 2009.jpg|thumb|Memorial to the murdered children of Lidice]]

A total of 203 women and 105 children were first taken to Lidice village school, then the nearby town of [[Kladno]] and detained in the grammar school for three days. The children were separated from their mothers and four pregnant women were sent to the same hospital where Heydrich died, forced to undergo abortions and then sent to different concentration camps. On 12 June 1942, 184 women of Lidice were loaded on trucks, driven to Kladno railway station and forced into a special passenger train guarded by an escort. On the morning of 14 June, the train halted on a railway siding at the [[concentration camp]] at [[Ravensbrück]]. The camp authorities tried to keep the Lidice women isolated, but were prevented from doing so by other inmates. The women were forced to work in leather processing, road building, textile and ammunition factories.<ref name="Shilka Publishing">{{cite book|last1=Phillips|first1=Russell|title=A Ray of Light: Reinhard Heydrich, Lidice, and the North Staffordshire Miners|date=2016|publisher=Shilka Publishing|isbn=978-0995513303|url=https://www.shilka.co.uk/heydrich-lidice/|page=69|access-date=2017-01-31|archive-date=2016-08-16|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160816061552/https://www.shilka.co.uk/heydrich-lidice/|url-status=live}}</ref>

Eighty-eight Lidice children were transported to the area of the former textile factory in Gneisenau Street in [[Łódź]]. Their arrival was announced by a telegram from [[Horst Böhme (SS officer)|Horst Böhme]]'s Prague office which ended with: ''the children are only bringing what they wear. No special care is desirable.''<ref>{{cite web | title=The Massacre at Lidice | website=Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team | date=1999-12-24 | url=http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/lidice.html | access-date=2020-07-19}}</ref> The care was minimal and they suffered from a lack of hygiene and from illnesses. By order of the camp management, no medical care was given to the children. Shortly after their arrival in Łódź, officials from the Central Race and Settlement branch chose seven children for [[Kidnapping of children for forced Germanization by Nazi Germany|Germanisation]].<ref name="Lynn H. Nicholas p 254">Lynn H. Nicholas, ''Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web'' p. 254 {{ISBN|0-679-77663-X}}</ref> The few children considered racially suitable for Germanisation were handed over to SS families.<ref name="Kaplan246"/>

The furor over Lidice caused some hesitation over the fate of the remaining children but in late June [[Adolf Eichmann]] ordered the massacre of the remainder of the children.<ref name="Lynn H. Nicholas p 254"/> However, Eichmann was not convicted of this crime at his trial in Jerusalem, as the judges deemed that "... it has not been proven to us beyond reasonable doubt, according to the evidence before us, that they were murdered."<ref>[[Hannah Arendt|Arendt, Hannah]] 1963 "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" p. 207</ref> On 2 July, all of the remaining 82 Lidice children were handed over to the Łódź [[Gestapo]] office, who sent them to the [[Chełmno extermination camp]] {{convert|70|km|0|abbr=off}} away, where they were gassed to death in [[Magirus]] [[Nazi gas van|gas van]]s.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}} Out of the 105 Lidice children, 82 were murdered in Chełmno, six were murdered in the German [[Lebensborn]] orphanages and 17 returned home.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}

===Lidice===

The village was set on fire and the remains of the buildings destroyed with explosives. All the animals in the village—pets and [[Working animal|beasts of burden]]—were slaughtered as well. Even those buried in the town cemetery were not spared; their remains were dug up, looted for gold fillings and jewellery, and destroyed.<ref name="Kaplan241"/> A 100-strong German work party was then sent in to remove all visible remains of the village, re-route the stream running through it and the roads in and out. They then covered the entire area the village had occupied with topsoil and planted crops, and set up a barbed-wire fence around the site which had notices reading, in both Czech and German, "Anyone approaching this fence who does not halt when challenged will be shot". A film was made of the process by Franz Treml, a collaborator with German intelligence. Treml had run a [[Carl Zeiss AG|Zeiss-Ikon]] shop in Lucerna Palace in Prague and after the Nazi occupation, he became a film adviser for the [[Nazi Party]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Remains of Lidice in June 1942 |url=https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn556023 |website=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |access-date=5 April 2022 |format=film |archive-date=17 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220517053434/https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn556023 |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Further reprisals===

The small Czech village of [[Ležáky]] was destroyed two weeks after Lidice, when [[Gestapo]] agents found a radio transmitter there that had belonged to an underground team who parachuted in with Kubiš and Gabčík. All 33 adults (both men and women) from the village were shot.{{sfn|Gerwarth|2011|p=285}} The children were sent to concentration camps or [[Aryanization (Nazism)|"Aryanised"]]. The death toll resulting from the effort to avenge the death of Heydrich is estimated at over 1,300 people.{{sfn|Gerwarth|2011|p=285}} This count includes relatives of the partisans, their supporters, Czech elites suspected of disloyalty and random victims like those from Lidice.