Lidice, << LIHD uh see, >> was a village in Czechoslovakia that German military forces destroyed in an act of revenge during World War II (1939-1945). Lidice became a symbol of Nazi cruelty.
German troops occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. In May 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, a Nazi who played a key role in the Holocaust and controlled much of the country, was fatally wounded. The Nazis claimed that residents of Lidice helped kill Heydrich. But no evidence was found to support this claim. On June 10, 1942, the Germans shot all of Lidice’s 192 men. The Nazis sent about 200 women and about 100 children to concentration camps. There, more than 50 of the women and more than 80 of the children were killed. The village was torn down. After the war, some of the survivors built a new village called Lidice near the original site, near Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic. The original site now serves as a memorial to the sufferings of Czechoslovakia under German occupation.
See also Czechoslovakia (The Munich Agreement) ; Heydrich, Reinhard .
