Lidice Lives! Art's Response to a War Atrocity

In this talk, Professor Cynthia Paces (The College of New Jersey) examines how the Nazi destruction of Lidice in 1942—announced in grim headlines around the world—sparked a powerful global response from artists, writers, filmmakers, and workers. Though Lidice could have been lost amid the many atrocities of World War II, it instead became a lasting symbol of resistance. Langston Hughes and Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote poems; Fritz Lang and Douglas Sirk directed films; and communities across the Americas and Europe honored the village through memorials and acts of solidarity. A specialist in Central European history and author of the forthcoming Prague: The Heart of Europe (Oxford, 2025), Professor Paces will also explore why Lidice continues to resonate today.

On June 11, 1942, The New York Times delivered harrowing news: “Nazis Blot Out a Czech Village.” A German radio broadcast confirmed the destruction of Lidice, reporting that “all adult men were shot, women sent to concentration camps, and children brought to appropriate educational institutions.” The massacre was presented as retaliation for the villagers’ alleged involvement in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia.

In a war marked by countless brutalities, Lidice might have faded from memory. Instead, it inspired an international outpouring of grief and resistance. American poets Hughes and Millay composed elegies; exiled German filmmakers in Hollywood—Fritz Lang and Douglas Sirk—brought the tragedy to the screen; and British director Humphrey Jennings reimagined the massacre in a Welsh setting. Artists created posters to expose what “Nazi brutality looks like.” Communities in Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, and Illinois renamed towns in Lidice’s honor, and British miners pledged to rebuild the village after the war.

is Professor of History at The College of New Jersey. She earned her Ph.D. in Central European history from Columbia University and has published widely on the history of the Bohemian Lands. She is the author of Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred Space in the 20th Century (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009) and co-editor of 1989: The End of the 20th Century (W.W. Norton, 2009). Her research has addressed themes such as nationalism, religious identity, collective memory, gender, urban history, and the social history of medicine. Her forthcoming book, Prague: The Heart of Europe (Oxford University Press, August 2025), offers a sweeping narrative of the city’s political and cultural evolution from the Middle Ages to today.

The event is part of a series commemorating 80 years since the End of World War II, organized in collaboration with the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences:

A talk by Igor Lukes, Professor of History and International Relations, Boston University

A talk by Professor Cynthia Paces, The College of New Jersey

An audio-visual presentation by Julie Urbišová

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