1942 June 10th. Lidice.

Late in the afternoon of 27 May, SS-Gruppenführer Karl Hermann Frank proclaimed a state of emergency and a curfew in Prague.  Anyone who helped the attackers was to be murdered along with their entire family. A massive search involving 21,000 men began. A total of 36,000 houses were checked. By 4 June 157 people had been murdered as a result of the reprisals, but the assassins had not been found and no information was forthcoming. 

The mourning speeches at Heydrich's funeral in Berlin were not yet over, when on 9 June, the decision was made to "make up for his death". Karl Hermann Frank, Secretary of State for the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, reported from Berlin that the Führer had commanded the following concerning any village found to have harboured Heydrich's killers: 

1. Execute all adult men
2. Transport all women to a concentration camp
3. Gather the children suitable for Germanisation, then place them in SS families in the Reich and bring the rest of the children up in other ways
4. Burn down the village and level it entirely

Men massacred at Horák's Farm in Lidice

Massacre

Horst Böhme, the SiPo chief for the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, immediately acted on the orders.Members of theOrdnungspolizei and SD (Sicherheitsdienst) surrounded the village of Lidice, blocking all avenues of escape. The Nazi regime chose this village because its residents were suspected of harbouring local resistance partisans and were falsely associated with aiding "Operation Anthropoid" team members.

Post-war memorial ceremony to honour victims

All men of the village were rounded up and taken to the farm of the Horák family on the edge of the village. Mattresses were taken from neighbouring houses where they were stood up against the wall of the Horáks' barn. The shooting of the men commenced at about 7.00 am. At first the men were shot in groups of five, but Böhme thought the murders were proceeding too slowly and ordered that ten men be shot at a time. The dead were left lying where they fell. This continued until the afternoon hours when there were 173 dead. Another 11 men who were not in the village that day were arrested and murdered soon afterwards as were eight men and seven women already under arrest because they had relations serving with the Czech army in exile in the United Kingdom.