The Silent Village exhibition and publication: Peter Finnemore, Rachel Trezise and Paolo Ventura in response to the 1943 film, The Silent Village by Humphrey Jennings. Exhibition curator and main author of the accompanying publication Dr Russell Roberts, Reader in Photography at the European Centre for Photographic Research, University of Wales, Newport. Ffoto Gallery, Cardiff.

摘要

On the morning of Wednesday, 10 June, 1942, the village of Lidice, about 20 kilometres North-West of Prague, in Czechoslovakia was destroyed in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, controller and highest ranking Nazi official in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Acting on Hitler’s direct order, the men of the small mining village were rounded up and shot in groups of five, until the SS Commander in charge, irritated by the delay in carrying out the executions, ordered that ten be shot at a time. By mid-afternoon 173 men lay dead around Horak’s farm, a photograph taken later that day shows them strewn in lines across the ground, the walls of the farm lined with mattresses to absorb the bullets and limit ricochet fire. Two days later 184 women from Lidice were deported to the concentration camp at Ravensbruck, from where less than half survived. Separated from their parents 105 children were sent to Lodz where they were imprisoned and maltreated. A few weeks later they were shipped 70 kilometres away to an extermination camp at Chelmno and gassed to death. Only a few survived the war. In all some 340 villagers died as a result of the Nazi reprisal.