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ArtsThe Silent Village and The Second Life of Lidice
June 10th, this year marks the 60th anniversary of the horrific massacre of the men of Lidice - a village west of Prague that was wiped off the map by the Nazis during WWII. The men were shot, the women sent to concentration camps, and the children were taken away to never return. In this week's Arts, Dita Asiedu looks at two documentaries - The Silent Village and The Second Life of Lidice - that re-live the horrors of the tragic event sixty years ago... More
Current AffairsExhibitions mark 60th anniversary of assassination of Nazi governor Heydrich
The assassination by two Czechoslovak soldiers of the
Nazi governor of occupied Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich,
on May 27, 1942 was one of the most daring missions of World War II.
Heydrich had ruled the Czechs with unsurpassed brutality and was one
of the masterminds of the genocide of European Jews. The impact of the
killing of Heydrich on the Czech nation was immense, and the legacy
of those events 60 years ago has remained controversial to this day.
On Monday two exhibitions marking the assassination opened
in Prague. More
Current AffairsRusty unfinished memorial in Lidice to be replaced by a park
On June 10, 1942, the village of Lidice West of Prague was razed to the ground by the Nazis in revenge for the assassination of the German Reich's protector Reinhardt Heidrich in the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. To remember this horrific event from WW II, the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia decided to erect a memorial in Lidice at the end of the 1970s. Giant iron-and-concrete construction started in the mid 1980s, and some 30 million crowns were invested. After 1989, the construction of the memorial, strongly marked by Communist ideology, was stopped, but its ruins have been spoiling Lidice's appearance ever since. Now the Ministry of Culture has given the green light to finally pull down the rusty construction and replace it with a park. Jan Velinger spoke to Radio Prague's David Vaughan, who has done extensive research on Lidice and its tragic history.
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