Growing up in 1950s middle America (in the Hoosier capitol) I saw a lot of WWII themed TV shows. They were omnipresent. One program featured famous and notorious events of the war.
Seeing the indiscriminate mass murder carried out by the Jews-only State of Israel in Gaza brought up a memory of one of the programs I saw when I was around 10-11 years old. It was about what was once considered to be an unconscionable war crime: the collective punishment of the Czech village of Lidice.
Now it looks like small change compared to the barbaric slaughter being meted out by made in the U.S.A. bombs by the “most moral army in the world.”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lidice massacre
Lidice in 1942 after its destruction by the Nazis
LocationProtectorate of Bohemia and MoraviaDate10 June 1942TargetCzechs
Attack type
Genocidal massacre[1]WeaponsFirearmsDeaths340 including 82 children exterminated later after transfer to ChełmnoPerpetrators
Nazi GermanyMotiveReprisal attack following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
The Lidice massacre (Czech: Vyhlazení Lidic) was the complete destruction of the village of Lidicein the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which is now a part of the Czech Republic, in June 1942 on orders from Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and acting Reichsprotektor Kurt Daluege, successor to Reinhard Heydrich. It has gained historical attention as one of the most documented instances of German war crimes during the Second World War, particularly given the deliberate killing of children.
In reprisal for the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich in the late spring of 1942,[2]all 173 men from the village who were over 15 years of age were executed on 10 June 1942.[3] A further 11 men from the village who were not present at the time were later arrested and executed soon afterwards, along with several others who were already under arrest.[3] Out of a total 503 inhabitants, 307 women and children were sent to a makeshift detention center in a Kladno school. Of these, 184 women and 88 children were deported to concentration camps; 7 children who were considered racially suitable and thus eligible for Germanisation were handed over to SS families, and the rest were sent to the Chełmno extermination camp, where they were gassed to death.[3][4]
The Associated Press, quoting German radio transmissions which it received in New York, said: "All male grownups of the town were shot, while the women were placed in a concentration camp, and the children were entrusted to appropriate educational institutions."[5] Approximately 340 people from Lidice were murdered in the German reprisal (192 men, 60 women and 88 children). After the war ended, only 143 women and 17 children returned.[3][6][7][8][9]
Nazi propaganda openly and proudly announced the events at Lidice in direct contrast to the disinformation and secrecy involved with other crimes against civilian populations, with intense outrage occurring among Allied nations and particularly Anglosphere countries. The history has been depicted in multiple forms of media since the end of the conflict. Examples include the internationally known drama film Operation Daybreak and the composer Bohuslav Martinů composed orchestral workMemorial to Lidice.
In socio-political and legal terms, the event is known as a notable example of a "genocidal massacre", which describes an act of mass killing against a specific community of victims done in step of a larger and more violent campaign enacting hatred against broader groups. This is a part of the larger topic of genocide studies.[1]