[li-dyi-tse; Eng. lee-duh-chey, lid-uh-see] 
| a village in the W Czech Republic: suffered a ruthless reprisal by the Nazis in 1942 for the assassination of a high Nazi official. 509. |
| Li·di·ce (lĭd'ĭ-sē, lē'dē-tsě) A village of northwest Czech Republic west-northwest of Prague. In reprisal for the murder of a Nazi official, German forces killed its male population, deported the women and children to concentration camps, and burned the village to the ground (June 9-10, 1942). The village was rebuilt following the end of World War II. |
Lidice
village, Czech Republic, just northwest of Prague. Before World War II it was a mining settlement of the Kladno coal basin and had a population of about 450. On June 10, 1942, it was "liquidated" by German armed forces as part of a massive reprisal for the assassination by Czech underground fighters of Reinhard Heydrich ("Heydrich the Hangman"), deputy leader of the SS. On June 9, five days after Heydrich died of bomb injuries, the SS rounded up Lidice's inhabitants. The 172 men were shot the next day. The women, except for 7 who were shot on the spot or who had been shot earlier trying to flee, were transported to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, where 49 died (7 by gas) and 3 "disappeared." The 90 children, after one had been shot running away, were screened and found "racially pure" and were dispersed through Germany to be renamed and raised as Germans. Local miners (19 men) who were missed on the first round were executed later in Prague. When the massacre and deportation were complete, the SS burned Lidice, dynamited what was left standing, and leveled the debris.
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