The Monument is in the memory of Lidice, a village in
Czechoslovakia and is listed in the Wisconsin Register of Historical Places. The village of Lidice was razed to the ground and the
landscape altered (rivers diverted) to remove its very existence by the Nazi Gestapo.
It is recorded that 173 men perished to avenge the murder of the sadistic "protector" of occupied
Czechoslovakia. The Gestapo dragged the inhabitants of Lidice from their
homes, shot all men over 16 and condemned women to a living death
in concentration camps while their children were sent away to become
"Germanized." Although the entire world reacted to
the WWII atrocity, only two such memorials exist in the United States.
The monument was completed and dedicated in 1944.
After repairing the monument from the 1977 "downburst" the
monument was rededicated in June 1984.
Every year the Phillips community remembers those
who have suffered so much at a special ecumenical service. See home page for
date, time, and location for this years service. Located in Phillips on
Fifield Street, one block off of Hwy 13. (Behind Timber Inn Motel).
For more information
on Lidice. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Lidice Memorial placed on national register
Patti Wenzel, patti.wenzel@mx3.com
Wednesday, May 02nd, 2007 07:16:01 PM
Photo by Patti Wenzel
Lidice Memorial now: Phillips residents Emily Koci Palka (back,
fourth from right) and George Koci (back, third from right)
are joined by members of the Czechoslovakian Community
Festival, local Girl Scouts and other citizens to place a
plaque at the memorial commemorating its inclusion on the
National Register of Historic Places on April 28.
“Remember Lidice!” and “Lidice Shall Live!”
Those
cries rallied the Czechoslovakian community surrounding Phillips in
1942 and continue to rally them 65 years later.
Adolf
Hitler’s massacre of 1,800 residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, in
June 1942 and more than 10,000 Czechoslovakians over the course of
World War II led to communities around the world to raise funds and
construct memorials to the fallen people of Lidice.
Phillips was no different in its reaction to the horror.
Many residents had connections to the European town,
since many of the family names of the dead were and are
familiar throughout Price County - Horak, Moravek,
Novotny, Podhora and Zeman.
As a
result of the atrocity, the Phillips community, along with the ZCBJ/WFLA
Lodge and Sokol members, organized, collected money, built and
dedicated the Lidice Memorial at Sokol Park on Fifield Street in
Phillips. The monument was dedicated in June 1944, and in 2006, it
was listed on the National Register of Historic Places through the
dedicated efforts of Therese Trojak.
A
plaque commemorating the national recognition was placed on the
monument April 28 during a spring cleaning of the park in connection
with “Join Hands Day,” an national event sponsored by the WFLA lodge
to bring adults and children together for community projects..
Placement on the National Register of Historic Places recognizes the
Lidice Memorial’s place in America’s cultural and architectural
past, noting that it honors the sacrifice of the Czechoslovakian
people during WWII.
The
Lidice Memorial is the 12th property in Price County to be placed on
the national register. The others are Bloom’s Tavern and the old
Phillips High School in Phillips; Deadman’s Slough in Flambeau; the
Fifield Town Hall and Round Lake Logging Dam in Fifield; the
Flambeau Paper Company offices and the Park Falls Post Office in
Park Falls; the Albin Johnson Log House in Ogema; the Matt Johnson
Log House in Brantwood; the Prentice Co-op Creamery in Prentice and
Wisconsin Concrete Park in Worcester.
Phillips
- Like so many other festivals in small town Wisconsin, the upcoming
Czechoslovakian Community Festival will feature good food and cold drink, arts
and crafts, music and dancing and a variety of ethnic delights, among such
highlights the Osacho Sisters playing the Sunday polka mass and Kolacky, the
Bohemian llama.
But it is in its roots that the festival departs
from the norm. Most community celebrations are born of happy notions -
strawberries or blueberries, mushrooms or beer, Swiss independence or Norwegian
freedom.
Czechoslovakian Fest, decades in the making, grew
out of the rededication of a local monument erected years earlier in a Phillips
park to remember "the horrifying, heinous events" in an obscure European village
on June 10, 1942. On that day, Nazi Gestapo razed the village as part of their
campaign against the Czech resistance, killing 173 men and condemning women and
children to concentration camps.
The village was Lidice, in what was then called
Czechoslovakia.
"Lidice," a guide to the Phillips monument said,
"would never again be obscure." In Phillips and throughout Price County, it
never really was.
To understand how this small northern community
was so affected by events in Europe it helps to understand Wisconsin
immigration. Phillips, named for the general manager of the Wisconsin Central
Railroad that made its way to Price County in the logging days, was initially
settled by Germans, English, Welsh, Scandinavian and Irish immigrants, mostly to
work in the great forests.
Struggle for farmers
When the logging era ended, and after great fires
wiped out much of Phillips and its businesses, new settlers were needed to buy
the logged-over land, generally rocky and hard to farm but funny how the
brochures mailed to new immigrants forgot to mention that. Many of those who bit
on the offer were Bohemians, Moravians and Slovaks who arrived here after 1900
and settled in Phillips, or in nearby Sailor Creek, Devine Rapids or Viola
Villa.
At one point it was estimated 60% of area farmers
were of Slavic background, most working 40 or 80 acres and, while often poor,
making a go of it in America. In-town Bohemian businesses included the local
creamery, Samal's Shore and Harness Shop, Vokurka's Meat Market, Frank Kudrna's
Ceska Grocery, Anton Zderad's White Front Store, Koci's Grocery and Warga's
Tavern. In their off hours the immigrants enjoyed their polka music and many
took part in athletic games as part of the Sokol Movement, which emphasized
physical and cultural education. Sokol adherents greeted each other with "Nazdar!",
or "toward success," and in Phillips what would become Sokol Park was created in
1927, the deed held by the local Czecho-Slovak Hall Association.
Therese Trojak, whose grandparents on her mother's
side were drawn to Price County farmland by ads in a Bohemian newspaper they
found in Chicago, remembers hearing classmates speak Czech in grade school,
because it was the language still spoken at home.
So of course Phillips, where many still had
relatives in Czechoslovakia, if not in Lidice itself, was especially horrified
by what transpired in June 1942. Around the world the phrase "Lidice Shall Live"
was heard, and in Phillips it was followed by action.
Changes over time
In the months after those horrifying, heinous
events volunteers went door to door to raise money for a monument that would
remember Lidice. A temporary marker was erected in the summer of 1943, and a
permanent monument was erected in Sokol Park, with "Lidice" forged in letters
across the top of a tall, round, red stone pillar representing the United
Nations and three iron rods representing the Czechs, Slovaks and Moravians
leaning on the UN. A large stone half circle stands for the rising sun, meant to
show that Lidice would rise again.
The monument was dedicated in 1944, and for many
years after a memorial service was conducted on the Sunday closest to June 10.
But time passes, and times change. As younger
generations succeeded original immigrants Phillips became a bit less ethnically
aware, and interest in the Sokol movement fell. The park was eventually deeded
to the city, and a storm in 1977 damaged the monument.
In 1984, however, the city council agreed to
restore the marker and appealed to local residents of Czech background to
arrange for a re-dedication. Interest was limited at first, but then a chord was
struck. In addition to the re-dedication residents agreed that Phillips needed a
celebration of Czechoslovakian history and culture, an event that should always
include a memorial service for the people of Lidice.
The first festival was a one-day affair, with
church services in the old language and the Czech-Moravian Dancers of Milwaukee
as entertainment. But almost immediately organizers decided they needed two days
to cover all the events and groups that wanted to take part, still with a
service for Lidice as part of every festival. In earlier years that meant a
break in the afternoon for a short memorial, Trojak said, and later it was moved
to the end of the second day, when it was only sparsely attended. Now, the
Lidice Memorial Service will kick off the festival weekend on June 17 at Trinity
Lutheran Church, followed by two full days of festival events.
Even Toni Brendle, who is in her 22nd year with
the festival, admits not all who attend the weekend events know about Lidice or
what the monument represents.
"Probably not, to be perfectly honest with you. It
is in the history books, and there was a movie written about it," she said.
"Except for that, the local people only know about it because we celebrated -
not celebrated the (killings) but we celebrated the rebuilding of the village."
'War does terrible things'
But it remains a very important part of the
weekend, she said, "because that's what got the whole thing started. We went
from commemorating those people to celebrating our own heritage.
"Primarily the most important part is that war
does terrible things. War is hell. And if we can keep alive the atrocities . . .
maybe that will help. I think it's very important that we continue to
commemorate that village."
And so, once again, they will. The 22nd annual
Phillips Czechoslovakian Community Festival will be held June 17, 18 and 19 in
Phillips, on Highway 13 in Price County. Saturday events will include the Miss
Czech-Slovak Wisconsin State Queen Pageant, music and dancing and arts and
crafts. On Sunday, both Protestant and Catholic churches will feature polka
services, followed by a pork and sauerkraut dinner and other events. For more
information, call (888) 408-4800.
Ležáky was a settlement inhabited by poor
stone-cutters and little cottagers. It was composed
of eight houses concentrated near the mill; this
mill had created the basis for the village named
after the rivulet Ležák.
In December 1941 several paratroopers were
dropped into the
Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, some of them
were sent to assassinate
Reinhard Heydrich (see
Operation Anthropoid for details). Another group
were part of Operation Silver A and several people
from Ležáky helped them, providing a hiding place
for their radio station. After the assassination of
Heydrich (May
27
1942) the revenge of the Nazis started with
martial law.
On
June 10 the village of
Lidice was razed to the ground and its male
inhabitants shot. On
June 24 over 500 armed Germans surrounded Ležáky,
took away all the inhabitants and set the village on
fire. In
Pardubice 32 villagers (both men and women) were
shot and burned in local crematorium; 13 children
were separated. On June 26 a press release announced
the event publicly. Before the Christmas of 1943,
the débris of Ležáky was pulled down.
Two of the children were selected for the 'Aryanisation'
programme (both were found and returned after the
war); the remaining 11 were sent to the
concentration camp Chełmno and in summer 1942
gassed (together with children from Lidice).
Unlike Lidice, Ležáky was not rebuilt after the
war, and only memorials exist today. On the
Phillips' Lidice Memorial is a small plaque
remembering the village of Ležáky. Few people
remember the story listed above.
