Vcelakov, East Bohemia, Feb 26 (CTK) – Marie Jerabkova, one of the two sisters who were the only ones to have survived the Nazi razing to the ground of the Lezaky village in 1942, died at the age of 76 on Sunday, Jerabkova’s niece Jarmila Dolezalova Junior confirmed the information of the webpage denik.cz on Monday.
Now her sister Jarmila Dolezalova Senior,78, is the only survivor of the crime.
Lezaky was burnt down on June 24, 1942, in retaliation for the assassination of Bohemia and Moravia Acting Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich in Prague, two weeks after the Nazis razed Lidice, central Bohemia, to the ground. Fifty-two Lezaky inhabitants were murdered.
The Nazis obliterated Lezaky after they found out that the Czech paratroopers who were trained in Britain and who assassinated Heydrich, maintained connection between the domestic and foreign resistance via a radio transmitter.
The Nazis executed 34 adults from Lezaky on June 24, 1942, and they shot dead another seven people from Lezaky and more than 40 collaborators of the paratroopers on June 25 and July 2, 1942. Thirteen Lezaky children were transported from Lezaky. Eleven of them were gassed in Chelmno, Poland, on July 25.
Two girls, just the sisters Marie and Jarmila Stulikovas, were selected for Germanisation, thanks to which they survived the war. At that time, they were one year and two years and six months old, respectively. They returned to Czechoslovakia in 1946.
