Lezaky

About 120 kilometres east of Prague there was a small village called Lezaky. About forty people lived there and most worked at a nearby quarry. Several of those working at the quarry came after the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia to engage in a resistance movement called Cenda. While Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik were parachuted over Czechoslovakia in late December 1941 to prepare for the attack on Reinhard Heydrich, a number of other men were also dropped from the same plane. Their task was to establish various radio transmitters in the occupied Bohemia Moravia and such a radio transmitter was placed in Lezaky. When the attack on Heydrich was executed on 27 May, 1942, a state of emergency was issued and a ruthless terror struck the Czech population (see Lidice). After one of the resistance men revealed information about the attack and other information about the Czech resistance movement, some traces led to Lezaky which turned out to be fatal fot the village and the people living there.

Like Lidice, the Nazis decided to set an example, on June 24, 1942, about 500 SS soldiers arrived in Lezaky. All residents of the village were arrested and the children who were in the school were ordered home. 47 men, women and children were taken to the prison in Pardubice. The village was looted and all nine houses were set on fire. That very evening, 33 of the village’s residents were murdered in Pardubice and another seven murdered, June 25, and, July 2. Eleven of the village’s children were murdered in Chelmno extermination camp, Poland. Two children were kidnapped to be germanized and placed in German families. Between October and December 1943, the germans destroyed the ruins of the burnt houses.