Hundreds of people gathered Saturday to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Nazis' revenge destruction of Lidice, which claimedmore than 300 civilians and shocked the world.
"They died so that others could live in freedom and dignity," President Vaclav Havel said in brief comments at the ceremony, broadcast live on state television.Prague's Archbishop Miroslav Vlk later celebrated Mass at the site of Lidice's former church, which was destroyed in the 1942 attack.
Lidice, a village of 500 near Prague, was burned after Czech resistance fighters assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, a Third Reich official in Prague. Heydrich was shot in Prague on May 27, 1942, and died eight days later.
The village was burned and erased from Nazi maps. After the war, it was rebuilt.