Lidice

While other small towns in the Czech Republic were experiencing the playful Pagan tradition, we were in a small town whose history was anything but playful. In fact, its past is so tragic that it largely doesn't exist anymore, and I feel wrong for even using the word "playful" in this post.

Lidice was a town that Hitler chose to destroy in reaction to the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. The town was ravaged, all the men lined against a farmhouse wall and shot, while the women and children were sent to concentration camps.

Where a community complete with church and school once was now lies only grass and a few stone foundations. Donations were taken from all over the world to rebuild the town, in a space slightly removed from the former center. Walking through the 'new' town reminded me a bit of Pleasantville, or the first verse or so of Malvina Reylnolds' Little Boxes. Rows of little houses, somewhat crowded, a few people spotted on their lawns or in patio chairs, all begging the question that we asked ourselves when we walked the streets of Terezín: Who would live here?

What compels people to (re)start lives and raise families in places so dark? To try and heal the place, the community? To demonstrate a certain strength? That though everything here was destroyed, whether it belonged to them before or not, they can progress, maybe thrive? Build something positive?

Why do people persist in the towns of tragedies?