ABSTRACT
We might return to the case of Lidice, discussed in the previous chapter. The Nazis were not merely satisfied with violating the bodies of the Lidice inhabitants with bullets, transport, or gassing. The space of Lidice, its standing as a community, was destroyed to complete a collective punishment. The Nazis demolished all the Lidice buildings, attacked the cemetery where generations of Lidice villagers had been buried and exhumed their bodies to find other valuables (such as gold teeth and rings), and, finally, transformed its landscape. A pond was filled in with stones from the building-rubble, and a “brook was altered in a few places” to make the location of the village—or what used to be the village—indiscernible. They changed the name of the area from Lidice to “Vorwerk” (before work), and physically altered the “relief of the landscape” (Stehlik, 2007, p 66). The first immediate function produced by the careful destruction of Lidice was the absence upon the landscape.
