The impact of the Lidice tragedy

Innocent villagers have suffered greatly. On June 4, 1942, the Gestapo surrounded the village and began a raid. On June 9, 1942, they gathered all 173 men over the age of 15 into the courtyard of Holak, the village chief, and killed them all the next day. Mothers and children in the village were forcibly separated and sent to concentration camps respectively. Only a few infants survived, but they were sent to German families, adopted by Germans and received Germanic education. After the war, when the women of Lidice returned to their villages from different concentration camps, they found that their children were either mutilated by the Nazis or had disappeared and could not be recovered. In the end, only 17 children who were sent away in infancy were found. Most of these children can only speak German but not Czech. The tragedy in the small village of Lidice is almost the epitome of all the oppressed nations in World War II. The Gestapo razed the village of Lidice to the ground in an attempt to destroy it from the earth, which aroused the anger of people all over the world.

On June 12, 1942, as soon as the news of the Lidice tragedy spread, a small town in Illinois, USA, announced that it had changed its name to Lidice. A month later, Mo Ye, near the Mexican capital, was renamed Lidice. In 26, it has developed into a big city with a population of 2 million.

Some villages in Brazil, Venezuela, Israel and South Africa, as well as squares, streets and even girls' names in other places began to be called Lidice.

Since 1948, volunteers from all over the world have built a brand-new Lidice village next to this ruin in order to let these freed Lidice women and children return home.