In June 1942: the small Czech village of Lidice, 12 miles from Prague was destroyed, its inhabitants murdered or deported and the village wiped from the map. The atrocity was a reprisal for a top-secret operation code-named Operation Anthropoid, planned by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). The goal of which was to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, a high-level Nazi official who was instrumental in the Final Solution. On 9th June, the day of Heydrich's state funeral in Berlin, Hitler ordered retaliatory measures against the Czech population. That very evening, German police and SS officials surrounded Lidice. The horrors that ensued were all caught on film, and it caused an international outcry. In this talk Dr Kate Vigurs, a Second World War Historian who specialises in Resistance and the Holocaust will trace the story of Lidice from the beginnings of Operation Anthropoid to today, and reveal its very special relationship with the city of Stoke on Trent.