Lidice

Today I went to Lidice. This is a village about a half an hour outside of Prague and in World War 2 it was completely destroyed by the Nazis as revenge on the Czech people after the assassination of Heydrich. The Nazis executed all of the men in the town, sent the women to concentration camps and most of the children were also sent to concentration camps. The men actually had to walk past their friends and neighbors dead bodies to be executed themselves. Many of the children were murdered and I think it was only something like 17 children survived the war out of about 100 in the town. After killing all the men and sending everyone else away the Nazis burned the town to the ground and blew up all of the buildings. This was all to get back at the Czechs for the assassination of one evil man. The tour guide told us that one of the Nazi officers son came to the memorial and after the tour told her what his father did and said he was proud of him. I was disgusted when I heard this story, especially after seeing all of the pictures of the people and children who died and how happy they looked just days before. The memorial was actually beautiful but it was very strange to think that all of what is now just a grassy area used to be people's homes. There was also a church from the 1300s that was destroyed along with pubs and stores that were in the village. Walking through this memorial was very strange because it was beautiful but also haunting thinking about what it represents. It was also strange to me that there were a few families just walking and playing with their children as if it were a normal park.