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    A Ray of Light: Reinhard Heydrich, Lidice, and the North Staffordshire Miners
    A Ray of Light: Reinhard Heydrich, Lidice, and the North Staffordshire Miners
    A Ray of Light: Reinhard Heydrich, Lidice, and the North Staffordshire Miners
    Ebook59 pages52 minutes

    A Ray of Light: Reinhard Heydrich, Lidice, and the North Staffordshire Miners

    By Russell Phillips

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    About this ebook

    Arnold Bennett Prize finalist.

    How North Staffordshire miners saved a Czech village during WWII.

    Lidice was a peaceful and vibrant community in Czechoslovakia with a rich mining heritage. But an act of Nazi revenge saw this village wiped from existence in a horrifying chapter of European history.

    Disaster struck for Lidice in 1942 when the prominent Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated. Described by Hitler as "the man with an iron heart", Heydrich was one of the key architects of the Holocaust.

    His death, after an attack by members of the Czech resistance, left Hitler furious and desperate for vengeance. Looking for a scapegoat to blame for Heydrich's death, he settled on the village of Lidice, which had been falsely linked to the assassination.

    In a brutal act which shocked the world, Lidice was completely destroyed. The men were shot while the women and children were rounded up and sent to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps.

    Hitler was determined that by the time he had finished, no one would even remember Lidice, let alone live there. What he hadn't reckoned on was the efforts of a group of campaigners in Britain, who resolved to make sure Lidice would never be forgotten.

    A Ray of Light tells the tale of Lidice's downfall and what happened next. Would the village simply be allowed to become a footnote in history, or would it rise from the ashes and forge a new future?

    This book is a compelling testament to the power of friendship and solidarity, and how empathy and compassion can help rebuild the world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShilka Publishing
    Release dateJul 17, 2016
    ISBN9781536500707
    A Ray of Light: Reinhard Heydrich, Lidice, and the North Staffordshire Miners
    Author

    Russell Phillips

    Russell Phillips writes books and articles about military technology and history. Born and brought up in a mining village in South Yorkshire, they have lived and worked in South Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Cumbria and Staffordshire. Russell has always had a deep interest in history and conflicts all over the world, and enjoys sharing their knowledge with others through clear, factual accounts which shine a light on events of the past. Their articles have been published in Miniature Wargames, Wargames Illustrated, The Wargames Website, and the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers' Journal. They have been interviewed on BBC Radio Stoke, The WW2 Podcast, Cold War Conversations, and The Voice of Russia. They currently live in Stoke-on-Trent with their wife and two children.

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      Book preview

      A Ray of Light - Russell Phillips

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      A Ray of Light: Reinhard Heydrich, Lidice, and the North Staffordshire Miners

      Russell Phillips

      Copyright © 2016 by Russell Phillips.

      Dedicated to my dad, Horace.

      The miner's lamp dispels the shadows on the coal face. It can also send a ray of light across the sea to those who struggle in darkness

      ―Dr Barnett Stross

      Preface

      In March 2013, I was at the Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent with my son. We were asked if we’d like to see a film about the village of Lidice, destroyed by the Nazis during the Second World War. I didn’t know the story of Lidice, and assumed it would be similar to that of Oradour-sur-Glane in France, the site of an infamous massacre.

      The film showed that Reinhard Heydrich, a senior Nazi and one of the main architects of the Holocaust, was assassinated in 1942. In retribution, the men of Lidice were shot, the women and children were sent to an extermination camp, and the buildings were destroyed. So far, the story was depressingly similar to that of Oradour-sur-Glane, although differing in detail.

      The story didn’t end there, and so the film continued. The buildings were bulldozed. The rubble was taken away. The remains in the cemetery were dug up. The stream that ran through the village was rerouted. The area was landscaped. When they were finished, there was no sign that a village had ever been there. This was exactly what Hitler had ordered. The destruction of the village and the murder of its inhabitants weren’t enough; he wanted the memory of Lidice to die. It was to be as if the village had never existed.

      After the viewing, I spoke to Nicola Winstanley, one of the artists of the Unearthed 2013 project. She told me the remarkable story of what happened next. How the generosity of North Staffordshire’s miners meant that Lidice was rebuilt after the war. Hitler died, but in direct opposition to his orders, Lidice lives.

      It is my sincere hope that this short book will help spread the story of Lidice and North Staffordshire’s miners. It’s an incredible story of outrageous cruelty, but also of tremendous compassion and generosity. We should remember the atrocity. It is when we forget these things that we allow them to happen again. We should also remember the

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