The director of the Lidice Memorial has resigned from her position

Prague - The director of the Lidice Memorial, Martina Lehmannová, resigned from her position effective January 21. Michaela Lagronová, spokesperson for the Ministry of Culture, which established the memorial, said this today to ČTK. The reason for the director's resignation was not provided. Lehmannová has led the memorial since April 2017. The institution will be temporarily headed by her statutory deputy, head of the economic department, Dagmar Kosová. The ministry will announce a competition for the position, the spokesperson added. Lehmannová told ČTK today that she is preparing a written statement regarding her resignation.

The Lidice Memorial faced criticism last November from people who survived the extermination of Lidice as children. They also criticized a report by Czech Television that dealt with an alleged denunciation by a Lidice resident a few days before the village was burned down. Survivors wrote in an open letter that Lehmannová is indifferent to the suffering of them and their families and that she does not respect the facts about the Lidice tragedy. In the letter, they state that they have become nothing more than a suffering addition to the memorial's external activities. The Minister of Culture, Lubomír Zaorálek (ČSSD), also intervened in the dispute, who visited Lidice at that time and said that Lehmannová must try to resolve the situation.

The Lidice Memorial commemorates the Nazi extermination of the village of Lidice on June 10, 1942. The pretext was the alleged connection of the village to the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich; out of approximately 500 residents of Lidice, only 160 survived the war. On June 10, 1942, 173 men from Lidice were shot, and subsequently, on June 16, 1942, another 26 Lidice citizens were executed in Prague-Kobylisy. Fifty-three women from Lidice did not survive their time in concentration camps. In a deportation camp, 82 children from Lidice were suffocated in a gas van. After liberation, 143 women and 17 children from Lidice gradually returned to their home village.

At the end of last year, one of the last two survivors, Miloslava Kalibová, passed away. She lived to be almost 97 years old. Only Jaroslava Skleničková remains from the women of Lidice.

In recent years, the Lidice Memorial has seen an increase in visitors; in 2017, over 150,000 people visited it, compared to 46,000 people in 2015. This state organization also manages the memorial sites in Ležáky and Lety, which also commemorate the atrocities of Nazism.