Prague, Feb 19 (CTK) – Vaclav Hanf, one of the survivors of the Czech Lidice village obliteration by Nazis in June 1942, has died after a long illness at the age of 82 years in a Prague hospital, the public Czech Television (CT) reported and the Lidice Memorial confirmed to CTK yesterday.
Hanf was one of “the Lidice children” of whom 12 are still alive.
After the Nazis burnt down Lidice, Hanf, aged eight years then, was sent to Germany for re-education. Along with his sister, he ended up in a German family under the name Hans Joachim Strauss,.
As he was qualified as disobedient, he spent the rest of the war in various reform institutions and eventually in the Ravensbruck concentration camp where many of the Lidice women were sent, he said.
One of them, Josefina Napravilova, found him there. He and both of his sisters survived the war.
Lidice, Central Bohemia, was obliterated on June 10, 1942. All 173 men were executed, women and children were sent to concentration camps, while some of the children were selected for re-education in Germany. After the war, only 143 women and 17 children returned to the country.
The village was razed to the ground in retaliation for the killing of high-ranking Nazi officer Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak paratroopers in May 1942.
hol/dr
