Larsons visit Prague and Lidice: a sobering history lesson!

On our way to the airport to meet the family, we saw fields and fields of these beautiful yellow flowers. We have learned they make rapeseed oil out of them!

Emily, Jake Featherstone, Eric and Mikeala!! It was so good to get better acquainted with Mikaela, and to meet Jake! We approve, he was well worth the wait! We're just sorry we will miss all the wedding festivities.

We went on an afternoon tour of the city so they could get their bearings, then gave them a map, and some suggestions and I think they had a great time for three days. They left for the weekend to visit Germany but got back in time for FamilyHome Evening!

The photo spot at church!

On Saturday the Elders invited us to meet Sestra Rezkova at the Lidice Memorial and we had no idea what a history lesson we were all in for...

Sestra Robbins, Elders Guzy, Wilding, Kartchner and Crane

On May 27, 1942 Reinhard Heydrich, the ruthless controller of Bohemia and Moravia was killed by British-trained Czech freedom fighters. Hitler was enraged and had 3,000 Czechs arrested. Over 1,000 were shot and another 600 died in police custody. He then ordered a small village 25 km from Prague named, Lidice to be wiped out in punishment and to "teach the Czechs a final lesson of subserience and humility."

On June 10th, 198 women and 98 children were locked inside the school house. 193 men and boys over the age of 15 were put in the farm buildings and the village was ransacked. The next morning the children were torn from their mothers. Then the mothers and children were sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp. ( 17 of the children were chosen to be "suitable" for Germanization and were given to SS families, the others were gassed.!!) The 193 men and boys were marched out of the farm house, lined up against the wall 10 at a time and shot!

Lidice was then destroyed..... declared by the Nazis to have been erased from history. The effect was quite different, it has become a symbol of Nazi terror and Czech torment. It is a hallowed little valley and we felt a reverent awe at what they so innocently suffered there.

An interview with some of the surviving children is shown inside the museum and I was touched by the last words of a father to his small daughter; "Don't forget God."

The wall where the men and boys were so brutally shot

Sister Rezkova who met us there and was our personal guide, laid these flowers at the memorial, fed us potatoe pancakes and told us of her memories of the war.

Czechoslovakia was freed by the Americans and Russians on May 9, 1945 ( 64 years ago and she was 6 years old). On May 10th she woke up early and found that her mother was not in the house. She was worried about her and went outside where she found her Mother helping tear down barricades around the city. A Russian came up to her and said, "Hey, skinny girl!" then handed her a chocolate bar, something she had never tasted before. Into her other hand she was given a piece of bacon. She said she went from eating the delicious chocolate to the delicious bacon and was afraid they would be taken away from her. That night her mother allowed her to stay up after dark. It was the first time she remembers seeing lights turned on in Prague at night. The lights in every home and every street lamp was turned on. People were in the streets celebrating, cheering and crying!
This outing was a sobering experience and an important reminder of how blessed we are to live under the mantle of freedom and protected by an inspired constitution written by honorable men of the past. We have been taught that the Nazi regime under Hitler was evil, but not until we had this experience did we realize how evil it really was and how fortunate and blessed we are. We know from this experience that we will never take our blessings and freedoms for granted.