#OnThisDay in 1942, the village of #Lidice was completely destroyed. The men were shot, the women sent to a death camp. A few children were sent to SS families to be "Germanised", the rest sent to a death camp with the women. The area around the village was landscaped so that no trace remained. Hitler had ordered that the memory of Lidice was to die.
Lidice was chosen because a man named Vaclav Říha wanted to end his affair with Anna Maruščáková. He sent a cryptic note to her workplace, suggesting that he was involved in the assassination of Heydrich (he wasn't). Under interrogation, she mentioned that a couple of men from Lidice were in Britain. The Gestapo initially assumed those two men were the ones that had assassinated Heydrich. By 10th June, they'd realised their mistake, but by then Hitler had issued his decree, and so Lidice was destroyed.
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#SecondWorldWar #histodons #history #LestWeForget