The Memory of Marie Šroubková from Lidice

Miloslava Podhorová, (now Jirasová), the landowner from Lidice, recalls how difficult it was for the women form Lidice to cope with the information about the tragic fate of their village. In the building of the grammar school in Kladno, the mothers from Lidice were violently separated from their children. They were told by the Gestapo officers that their children would be transported ahead of them but that they were to meet them soon. Upon their arrival to Ravensbrück, the women found that they were lied to and their children were not there. Despite attempts to conceal the truth about Lidice, these women soon started to find out from other female prisoners who arrived to the camp after them what had happened to their village. Some women were reluctant to believe what they were told. The hope of reuniting with their families kept them alive. Yet other women were not capable to withstand it. This was also the case of Marie Šroubková, a friend of Miloslava Podhorová, who heard from one of the prisoners that both the men and the children from Lidice were dead. “These people were not acting sensibly,” thinks Miloslava Jirasová. “One Czech woman told her about everything that had happened in Lidice. And Marie Šroubková came to the block and said ‘So…’ and then she walked straight into the electric wires.” They managed to stop her and Ms. Podhorová herself tried to console and support her friend psychologically. But in the end she had to be sent to the hospital block, where many imprisoned women, including Marie Šroubková, died under obscure circumstances.