KLADNO, June 11, 2018 — Marie Dolezalova Supikova, 85, and her great-granddaughter Karolina, 10,  lay a bouquet of palm foliage and carnations on the gymnasium floor at Kladno Gymnasium (high school), marking the site where, in 1942, the Gestapo separated Marie, then 10, from her mother. The same fate or worse awaited the other 87 children of Lidice who were sent to Kladno — a village near Lidice — with their mothers, only to be separated from them. Seven more children under the age of 1 were selected at Kladno Gymnasium for transport to a Prague children’s home. All of the Lidice women over age 16, including the mothers of those infants, were transported to Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany. Some of the women survived the war years and returned to Lidice, where new homes had been built for them near the original (destroyed) village. A few were reunited with their lost children.

Memorial wreaths and commemorative plaques at the site offer reminders of WWII’s devastating effects on countless children, women and men. These words are on those plaques:

Zde trpely lidicke zeny a deti (“Here suffered the women and children”)

Nezapominame (“Never forget”)

Copyright 2017 by Elizabeth Cernota Clark