A short walk around the poignant World War II memorial site of Ležáky: 1 km

• The Prague assassination of Richard Heydrich by Czech paratroopers, codenamed Anthropoid, on 27 May 1942, is one of the most well known events of the Second World War. It is known, not just for the remarkable story and heroism of the partisans involved in mission, but also for the terrible retributions that followed Heydrich’s death. Thousands were killed in the reprisals. The Nazi regime’s annihilation of the village of Lidice on 9 June 1942 became infamous worldwide.
• One of the most brutal (but much less well known) reprisals involved the rural hamlet of Ležáky, located in the Pardubice region of East Bohemia. In 1942, the village had just eight houses, a 17th century mill and a series of quarries. One of those quarries became the secret site for a transmissions, by the group of Czech resistance fighters known as ‘Silver A’, who were connected with the Heydrich assassination team.
• After the attack on Heydrich, the Anthropoid and Silver A teams was betrayed by a former team member, Karel Čurda. The Anthropoid parachutists and one member of the Silver A team, Josef Valčík, were discovered on 18 June 1942 hiding in a church on Prague’s Resslova street. After a seven hour battle with SS troops all the parachutists were killed or took their own lives to avoid capture.
• Within two weeks, the two remaining members of Silver A, Alfréd Bartoš and Jiří Potůček were also dead. Families in Ležáky were suspected of harboring the resistance fighters and on 24 June, nearly five hundred SS, Gestapo and collaborating Czechs surrounded the hamlet. All residents older than 14 were executed. Thirteen Ležáky children were transported to the concentration camp of Chelmno, where eleven were gassed to death later that summer.
• Only two children survived the massacre. The sisters, Jarmila and Marie Šťulík, whose family owned the mill, were selected for ‘Germanization’ and transported to foster homes. The sisters were repatriated to Czechoslovakia in 1946. The last surviving family of Ležáky have since kept alive the memory of the massacres. Marie’s daughter became Director of the Lidice memorial in 2017 and Jamila’s daughter has written acclaimed books on both Lidice and Ležáky.
• The hamlet was burnt to the ground and all traces of it removed by the Nazi workgroups. Unlike Lidice, however, the village was never rebuilt. Today, the landscaped area serves as a poignant reminder to the horrors of the war. Granite memorials stand in the location of every building to the families who lived there. A small, but excellent on-site museum is dedicated to the tragic events of 24 June 1942 (open from April to October).
• The walk around the grassy landscaped site visiting most of the stone memorials and museum is easy and only a little over 1 km. There is a much longer (16 km) education trail, with information boards (in Czech only) in the surrounding countryside, but as this follows a lot of public roads it is not really worth the effort. There is a snack bar on site for refreshments (open at the same time as the museum).

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Directions

• There are no public transport options to the memorial site, so most visitors will presumably drive and parking at the site. The walk around the landscaped area is obvious and does not require detailed directions