Lehmannová does not yet know when she will end her work at the Lidice Memorial

Lidice - Martina Lehmannová, who resigned from the position of director of the Lidice Memorial due to a dispute with some Lidice memorialists, does not yet know how much longer she will be working at the memorial. She believes the decision should come from the Ministry of Culture. Lehmannová does not anticipate a long-term stay at the memorial, she told ČTK today.

"Given what has happened, I simply have no reason to consider continuing to work at the Lidice Memorial," said Lehmannová.

This week, the Ministry of Culture announced a selection process for the position of director of the Lidice Memorial. According to Czech television, military historian Eduard Stehlík is considering candidacy. "The main reason I started to think about it is the phone calls from surviving residents of Lidice, asking for my help. And I feel it as a great obligation," he said today to ČT.

On Thursday, ten out of the 16 leading and specialist staff members of the memorial submitted their resignations. According to them, the memorial will revert to a normalized interpretation of history after the director's resignation. Conversely, 20 current and former employees of the Lidice memorial and the neighboring Ležáky Memorial released a statement today claiming that Lehmannová failed to communicate with the community and memorialists.

Some people who survived the annihilation of Lidice accused the director last year of distorting facts. This was a reaction to a television report about an alleged report made by a Lidice resident, the mother of one of the survivors, who allegedly informed the police about her Jewish tenant. Lehmannová spoke in the Czech Television report. She rejected the accusations of distorting facts or disrespecting the memory of the survivors. The Minister of Culture insisted on resolving relations with all survivors, which Lehmannová failed to achieve, leading her to resign after a meeting with the minister.

Jaroslava Skleničková, who also survived the Lidice tragedy, stood by the former director. In contrast, several survivors agree with the minister's actions, some of whom are members of the Lidice organization of the Union of Fighters for Freedom, led by Jana Bobošíková.

The Lidice Memorial commemorates the Nazi extermination of the village of Lidice on June 10, 1942. The pretext was the alleged connection of the village to the assassination attempt on the Reich protector Reinhard Heydrich; out of approximately 500 residents of Lidice, 160 survived the war. Directly in Lidice, the Nazis shot 173 men on June 10, 1942, and on June 16, 1942, another 26 residents of Lidice were killed in Prague-Kobylisy. Fifty-three women from Lidice did not survive their stay in concentration camps. In the deportation camp, 82 Lidice children were suffocated in a gas van. After liberation, 143 Lidice women and 17 children gradually returned to Lidice.

The Jewish woman Štěpánka Mikešová, who lived as a tenant with one of the Lidice families, was deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz at the beginning of June 1942, where she died.