Experts from the Lidice Memorial are leaving after the resignation of the director

Lidice - Ten of the 16 leaders and specialists of the Lidice Memorial have submitted their resignations. According to them, the memorial will return to a normalization interpretation of history following the resignation of director Martina Lehmann. Lehmann resigned due to a dispute with Lidice survivors. The Ministry of Culture has already announced a competition for her position. According to Minister Lubomír Zaorálek (Czech Social Democratic Party), the management of the memorial must come to a consensus with all survivors. Lehmann stated that the employees of the memorial always held all Lidice survivors in the deepest respect. She also rejected accusations that they do not respect the facts.

"With the approval of Minister of Culture Lubomír Zaorálek, this symbol (the Lidice Memorial) will now be returned to a normalization interpretation of history, which is uncompromisingly defended and represented by the Czech Union of Freedom Fighters at all levels. We refuse to accept this approach to the interpretation of history and memory institutions, and we do not intend to participate in it," stated the departing employees in a statement sent to the Czech News Agency today. The Lidice Memorial, which also oversees the Ležáky Memorial, has about thirty employees.

Minister Zaorálek believes that the resignations of the employees of the Lidice Memorial will not jeopardize it. "At this moment, we are taking steps to ensure that the activities of the memorial are not restricted until a new director is selected and the employee situation is replenished," a ministry spokesperson told Deník N.

Some people who survived the extermination of Lidice accused the director last year of distorting the facts. This was in response to a television report about an alleged denunciation by a Lidice resident who reported her Jewish lodger to the gendarmes. Lehmann denied the accusations. Zaorálek remarked on Monday after a meeting with survivors and representatives of the memorial that communication with survivors requires great consideration and sensitivity, and now it is not about gathering facts and reaching a definitive truth.

Jaroslava Skleničková, who also survived the Lidice tragedy, stood up for the former director. In contrast, several survivors agree with the minister's actions; some of them are members of the Lidice organization of the Union of Freedom Fighters, 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 of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich; of the roughly 500 residents of Lidice, 160 survived the war. On June 10, 1942, the Nazis shot 173 men in Lidice, and on June 16, 1942, they killed another 26 Lidice citizens in Prague-Kobylisy. Fifty-three women from Lidice did not survive the concentration camps. In a deportation camp, 82 children from Lidice were suffocated in a gas van. After liberation, 143 Lidice women and 17 children gradually returned to Lidice.

Jewish woman Štěpánka Mikešová, who lived as a tenant with one of the Lidice families, was deported to Auschwitz in early June 1942, where she died.