June 10, 1942

[Martin Antonenko]

Lidice...


On May 27, 1942 it succeeds - unfortunately! - only successful assassination attempt on a top Nazi official during the Second World War:

On this day, the two non-commissioned officers of the Czech army in exile, Jan Kubiš ...



... and Jozef Gabčík...



... the "Deputy Reich Protector" in the so-called "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" and head of the dreaded Reich Security Main Office and thus the Gestapo, Reinhard Heydrich ...



... to kill one of the main people responsible for the persecution and murder of the Jews in an attack ...:





The operation had been planned since 1941 by the Czechoslovak military intelligence service of the London government-in-exile and the British Special Operations Executive (SOE in London).

In order to be able to carry out this so-called "Operation Anthropoid", the two Czechs had previously jumped from a British plane near Prague.

After the attack, both of them were betrayed together with five supporters and discovered in their hiding place in Prague's Karl Borromeo Church (Church of St. Cyril and Methodius since 1935) ...:



After 350 SS men had encircled them in the crypt, there was a fire fight lasting several hours. To avoid arrest, the last four surviving resistance fighters committed suicide ...:



By the way: The car in which Heydrich was shot still exists today!

After the assassination attempt on May 27, the Mercedes-Benz 320B, built in 1938, was subjected to a forensic investigation and then used as a Gestapo and government vehicle.

After the end of the war, the car was still there and was used by the Czechoslovak Army as a company car until 1958.

Then it was used in the props of the Barrandov film studios in Prague. At the beginning of the 1990s, the Military History Institute in Prague bought the vehicle, which had meanwhile been damaged by the filming. Investigations by this institute revealed traces of the explosive that the assassins had used in their hand grenade in May 1942.

Today Heydrich's car can be seen in the "Deutsches Technikmuseum" at Berlin ...:





**continued next post**

 

[Martin Antonenko]

Part II


The slaughter in the Prague church, however, was not a revenge for the Nazis for their chief murderer - and in agreement with Hitler and SS chief Himmler, the governor Hans Frank ordered, as an "expiatory measure", the complete extinction of the village of Lidice, 20 kilometers west of Prague .:







The tragedy of the small village and its 503 inhabitants begins on June 10, 1942, a few hours after midnight.

German "police" (members of the Gestapo, SD and the Schutzpolizei under the command of SS officers of a special commission and the commander of the Sipo in Prague) with the support of the Protectorate Gendarmerie surround the village of Lidice and blocked all access roads. When it gets light, the Nazi "policemen" attack the village ...



All the villagers are rounded up.

172 men over 15 years of age are brought to the Horák family's yard, where they are immediately shot. With a fourteen-year-old boy taken away by his father, the number of those murdered 173 ...:







The mayor František Hejma ...



... is one of the last to be murdered, as he first has to confirm the identity of the victims.

The women and children are brought to the sports hall of the elementary school in the neighboring city of Kladno ...:



Three days later the children are separated from their mothers and, except for those selected for re-education in German families or under one year old, all are killed by exhaust fumes in specially converted vehicles at the Chelmno extermination camp in Poland. The women are taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where they are "annihilated through work" (as the Nazis called it).

When all the inhabitants of the village have been murdered or deported, the Nazis begin to destroy the village themselves. The houses are first set on fire and then razed to the ground with plastic explosives ...:







The church and even the place of his final resting place - the cemetery - were eventually destroyed. In 1943 all that was left was an empty square..:



Until the end of the Nazi occupation of the country, the area was marked with the notice "Betreten verboten" ("No trepassing").

The Nazi murderers have the whole action filmed by "journalists" they brought with them ...



... and announce the mass murder in the media ...:



340 Lidice residents were murdered by the Nazis, 143 Lidice women returned after the end of the war and after a two-year search, only 17 children were brought back to their mothers.

The village was not rebuilt in its original location, but instead a memorial was built ...:





About 300 meters from the former village, construction of the first houses of the new Lidice began in May 1948. A modern village with 150 houses was gradually built with the help of hundreds of volunteers from all over the Czech Republic and abroad.

 

[valiant]

Martin, my home city has an historic link to Lidice, as described in these links.....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-24639928

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/stoke/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_9418000/9418670.stm

https://english.radio.cz/a-true-act...and-miners-stoke-trent-helped-rebuild-8190520

cheers

 

[Martin Antonenko]

Thank you so much for addition, Steve!

 

[Airkid]

My late father was a great fan of pre-war Mercedes cars, and restored two during his retirement. He had a 1938 230 Sedan (ex German Embassy in London) and had almost finished a 260 Cabriolet which had belonged to Elizabeth Arden, of cosmetics fame. It had been commandeered by the Luftwaffe and was "liberated" by a British Colonel who brought it to the UK. It was quite similar to Heydrich's car. Both gone now sadly.

Lidice - we must never forget such inhumanity. I hope those smiling RAD men and the propaganda group fell into the Soviet meat grinder and maybe, just maybe, had a pang of regret at the end, though I doubt it.

Thanks Martin - we need reminding

 

[Chris Oldfield]

Another sidebar to this piece of history:
There is a long out of print book, still available on the second hand market if you do some digging, called “A Higher Form of Killing”. Published in the 1980s, it’s a history of chemical & biological warfare in the 20th Century.
One of the chapters relates to the assassination of Heydrich. The Nazis stated that he died of his wounds after they became infected due to the ingress of stuffing from the leather seat he sat on at the time of the attack. However, the book named above states that what actually caused his death was a biological weapon, a grenade designed & built at Porton Down & filled with toxins which caused blood poisoning.
Justified? You decide.

 

[Airkid]

That's interesting Chris. I had always believed he died of sepsis from the horse-hair stuffing from the car seat. I'd not be at all surprised if it was as otherwise stated. After all, the device was made in the UK and as I understand it, was designed to explode after being rolled under the car - the number of revolutions determining the point of detonation. Other theories abound but the bottom line is, the world was rid of another bad-ass.

Phil

 

[Nap]

Horrific to say the least , wiping out a whole village in retribution

Not easy pictures to view esoecially the memorials

Fascinationg additions in other posts

Thank you Martin

Nap