The Minister of Culture will present the new director of the Lidice Memorial today

Prague - Minister of Culture Lubomír Zaorálek (ČSSD) will present the new director of the Lidice Memorial today. Five candidates applied for the competition that took place last week, including historian Eduard Stehlík and, according to the media, historian Jiří Nenutil.

The former director of the memorial, Martina Lehmannová, who led it since April 2017, resigned in January due to a dispute with some Lidice memorialists; later, a number of leading and professional staff members also submitted their resignations.

Zaorálek previously stated that the new director should have a connection to Lidice, should be able to communicate, and gain the trust of all the inhabitants of Lidice.

The memorial commemorates the Nazi extermination of the village in June 1942. The pretext was the alleged connection of the village to the assassination of the Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich. Of approximately 500 inhabitants of Lidice, 160 survived the war. Directly in Lidice, the Nazis shot 173 men on June 10, and on June 16 in Prague-Kobylisy, another 26 inhabitants of Lidice. 53 women from Lidice did not survive their stay in concentration camps. In a deportation camp, 82 children from Lidice were suffocated in a gas van. After the liberation, 143 women and 17 children from Lidice gradually returned. The management of the memorial also includes the Memorial of Ležáky.