LIDICE LIVES

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 17th Year

Issue

Issue No.

2

Date Released

Oct 1963

Length of issue (in feet)

895

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1STEAM UP!
2. 2COAL-CORER
3. 3MERCHANTS OF VENICE
4. 4LIDICE LIVES

Story

Story No. within this Issue

4 / 4

Summary

BFI synopsis: the rebirth of the old mining village of Lidice, in Czechoslovakia, decimated by the Germans on 10th June 1942.
NCB Commentary - Slater: As you drive North-west from Prague towards the Kladno coalfield, you come to a small village called Lidice.
It is a new village. The old mining village died on June 10th 1942.
Mad SS Voice: In the course of the search for the murderers of SS Obergruppenfuhrer Heydrich, incontestable proof was found that the population of Lidice had given support and assistance to the perpretrators of the crime ...
Accordingly ... the male adults have been shot ...
... the women sent to a concentration camp ...
... and the children placed in suitable educational institutions.
The buildings have been razed to the ground ...
... and the name of the place has been deleted from the records.
Another mad voice: To SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Eichmann, personally. On June 13th 1942, 88 Czech children arrived here from the above-named village.
In the meantime, the Race and Resettlement Office has found seven of the children worthy of being Germanised.
I beg you to instruct me as to the disposal of the remaining children ...
Slater: Long before peace came, while the Nazi armies were still undefeated, people all over the world decided that Lidice should live.
Streets, squares, districts, villages were renamed Lidice.
In Britain the miners voted to have part of their wages deducted for a Lidice fund.
Union after Union, town after town, joined the "Lidice shall live" committee.
Another Voice: The Government of Czechoslovakia, on June 6th 1945, solemnly resolved to restore, in the liberated Czechoslovak Republic, the village of Lidice, with its ancient Czech official name.
Slater: Then, in 1954 the British Committee put up the idea of establishing beside the new village a Rose Garden of Peace and Friendship.
Today, the rose-garden is bright with 30,000 rose-bushes contributed by nearly 40 countries.
Lidice is the symbol of all the hundreds of villages and towns that were destroyed by the Nazis during the war.
If there were to be a rose garden in them all there would not be enough roses in the world.
Lidice lives.

Keywords

Buildings and structures; Mining; War damage; History and archaeology; Town and country planning

Locations

Czechoslovakia; Lidice

Written sources

British Film Institute Databases   Used for synopsis
The British National Film Catalogue   Vol.1 1963, p.56
The National Archives COAL 32   /13 Scripts for Mining Review, 1960-1963

Credits:

Commentator

John Slater

Sponsor

National Coal Board

Production Co.

National Coal Board Film Unit