10/06/2026
Today is 10 June 2026.
84 years since Lidice (1942!)
There are places where history does not feel distant.
Lidice is one of them.
You do not stand there and think only about dates, armies or politics. You think about fathers, mothers, children, kitchens, gardens, school bags, family photographs, ordinary lives.
And then you realise how quickly ordinary life can be destroyed when a criminal regime needs revenge.
After Operation Anthropoid and the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague, the N**is did not want truth. They wanted punishment. They wanted fear. They wanted a village that could be turned into a warning.
And the road to Lidice began with something painfully human and almost absurd.
A married man, Václav Říha, had been involved with Anna Maruščáková, a young worker from the Palaba factory in Slaný. He wanted to end the affair, so he wrote her a strange letter, pretending he had to disappear because of something dangerous connected to “that fateful day”.
Anna was not at work when the letter arrived.
Her employer opened it.
It sounded suspicious.
It was reported.
The Gestapo became interested.
In another world, it might have remained only a foolish letter from a man running away from his own mess.
But this was N**i-occupied Czechoslovakia after Heydrich.
During interrogation, Anna mentioned that Říha had once asked her to send greetings to the Horák family in Lidice.
And suddenly the Gestapo had the name they wanted.
Lidice.
Because two men from Lidice — Josef Horák and Josef Stříbrný — had escaped occupied Czechoslovakia and were serving abroad with the Czechoslovak forces in Britain, connected with the RAF.
To the N**is, that was enough to build the story they needed.
Lidice.
Britain.
RAF.
Resistance.
Heydrich.
But the connection was false.
Lidice was not hiding Gabčík and Kubiš.
Lidice did not carry out Operation Anthropoid.
Lidice was not guilty.
But under N**i rule, guilt was never the point.
On 10 June 1942, Lidice was surrounded.
The men were taken away from their families and shot.
The women were deported to Ravensbrück.
The children were torn from their mothers.
82 Lidice children were murdered in gas vans at Chełmno.
Only 17 Lidice children returned to Czechoslovakia after the war.
The village was burned.
The houses were destroyed.
The cemetery was desecrated.
Even the name Lidice was meant to disappear from maps.
The N**is wanted Lidice to die.
But Lidice did not die.
Its name travelled across the world.
In Britain, in Stoke-on-Trent, Dr Barnett Stross helped launch the Lidice Shall Live movement. Miners, workers and ordinary people gave money to help rebuild a Czech village many of them had never seen.
That is one of the most powerful parts of the story.
Lidice was not rebuilt only by governments and speeches.
It was rebuilt because ordinary people understood that if the N**is tried to erase a village, the answer had to be louder:
Lidice shall live.
And New Lidice was built after the war.
Not as a replacement — because nothing can replace murdered children, executed fathers and families torn apart — but as a living answer to the attempt to erase it.
That is why House No. 116 in New Lidice matters.
It is not only a house.
It is the part of the story where Lidice becomes life again.
A real home.
A rebuilt village.
A place where remembrance is not only silence, but survival.
And Lidice mattered far beyond one village.
Together with Operation Anthropoid and the sacrifice of the Czech resistance, the massacre helped force Britain to face the truth about the Munich Agreement — the Munich Betrayal of Czechoslovakia in 1938. In 1942, Britain renounced Munich for the future settlement of Czechoslovakia, opening the way for the promise that Czechoslovakia would be restored.
The price was unbearable.
Fathers.
Mothers.
Children.
Homes.
A whole village.
But Lidice lived.
On our special Lidice tour from Prague, we visit the Lidice Memorial, the museum, the old village area, the children’s memorial, and also House No. 116 in New Lidice — the part of the story where tragedy, memory and rebuilding meet.
This is not only a WWII tour from Prague.
It is the story of Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich, N**i revenge, Anna Maruščáková, Václav Říha, Josef Horák, Josef Stříbrný, the RAF, the murdered Lidice children, Barnett Stross, the Lidice Shall Live movement, New Lidice, House No. 116, the Munich Agreement, the Munich Betrayal — and the promise that Czechoslovakia would live again.
Lidice was destroyed.
But Lidice lived.
Remember Lidice.
Remember the children.
Remember Josef Horák and Josef Stříbrný.
Remember Barnett Stross and everyone who helped New Lidice rise again.
And remember that sometimes a village survives because the world refuses to let its name disappear.
Special Lidice tour from Prague:
https://www.operationanthropoidtours.com/lidice-village-memorial/
