London, May 16 (CTK) – The Czech Lidice Memorial, central Bohemia, will receive British artist Stan Young’s painting based on the tragedy of Lidice, a village obliterated by the Nazis, on the event’s upcoming 75th anniversary, the Czech embassy in London has written on its website.
Young visited Lidice during his study stay in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s. Moved by the Lidice story, he decided to paint the Nazi raid that razed the village to the ground on June 10, 1942 in retaliation for the assassination of high Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak paratroopers trained in Britain.
Young later donated the oil painting to the Lowenstein family.
Originally, Lidice could have acquired the painting as early as the late 1950s, if it had not been for a dispute over who will pay the transport costs, Czech Radio has reported.
The Lowensteins have now turned to the Czech embassy in London, offering to donate the painting to the Czech state.
The picture’s transfer and restoration will be secured by the embassy.
Afterwards, the picture will be ceremonially handed over to the Lidice Memorial in cooperation with the British embassy in Prague and in the presence of significant guests, the embassy wrote.
If the Lowenstein family’s information is correct, Stan Young received a contract for painting the picture, but he eventually fell out with Lidice over who should cover the costs of its transfer to Czechoslovakia. As a result, the painting remained in Britain, Anna Lowenstein, a daughter of the picture’s owners, told Czech Radio.
In June 1942, the Nazis burnt down Lidice, shot all local men dead, transferred the women and some children to concentration camps, where many of them perished, and sent the remaining children to German families for upbringing.
