The mourning speeches over Heydrich's coffin were not over in Berlin when on June 9, 1942 the decision was made to "make up for his death" by a bloody end to Lidice. [1] Karl Hermann Frank, Secretary of State for the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, reported from Berlin that the Führer had commanded the following : 1. shoot all adult men to death, 2. transport all women to a concentration camp, 3. gather the children suitable for Germanization and place them in SS families in the Reich and bring the rest up in other ways, 4. burn down and level the village entirely. Horst Boehme, SS Commander of the Einsatzgruppe C division, acted on the commands immediately. Members of German SS security police surrounded the village of Lidice, blocking all avenues of escape. The Nazi regime chose this village because of its residents' known hostility to the occupation and because Lidice was suspected of harbouring local resistance partisans. The entire population was rounded up and taken to Horak farm. Women and children were taken to the school building from where they were transported. Mattresses were taken from neighbouring houses where they were stood against the wall of the barn. Shooting of the men commenced around seven in the morning. The men were brought out in groups of five. Boehme thought the executions were proceeding too slowly and ordered that ten men be executed at a time. The dead were left lying were they fell and the newly brought out ones had to first walk past them and stand in front of them. The firing squad always made two steps back and the scene of horror repeated itself. The men were not blindfolded and were taken to the place of execution without bonds. This monstrous spectactle continued until the afternoon hours when there were 173 dead bodies lying in the Horak farm orchard. The next day, another nineteen men who were working in a mine, along with seven women, were sent to Prague, where they also were shot.
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