Remembering the life of Eva Kubíková-Bullock, one of the surviving children of the Lidice massacre
At the end of December, Eva Kubíková-Bullock, who was one of the surviving children of Lidice, died at the age of eighty-seven. She lived in Canada but visited Lidice repeatedly throughout her life. During the Second World War, the Nazis murdered 88 of the 105 children from Lidice. After 1945, 17 of them returned to Lidice. Six are still alive today.
Eva Kubíková-Bullock was born on April 29, 1937, in Prague and died on December 28 in Hamilton, Canada. Her mother, Anna, lived in Lidice, where she met her future husband, František. He worked as an editor for the Czech Press Agency and was also involved in broadcasting for Czechoslovak Radio. The Nazis razed Lidice to the ground on June 10, 1942, executing 173 men, including Eva's father. This was due to the alleged connection of one of the residents of Lidice to the assassination of the acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich.
Eva was later selected by the Nazis as one of the children destined for re-education, or “Germanization,” in Lodz, Poland. Her father's sister living in Germany, Ella Spernagel, managed to take custody of Eva with the promise of Germanizing Eva.
After the Communist coup in 1948, the family left the country. The escape was successful in the autumn of 1949, the parents and their young children illegally crossed the border at the time of the border guards' lunch.
On the other side of the border, German soldiers were waiting for them and transported them to the headquarters of the International Refugee Organization in Munich. From there, the family traveled to Norway, where the mother had a friend from the Ravensbrück concentration camp who helped them adapt to life in a foreign country. They lived there until 1954, when they decided to move to Canada to live with the relatives of their stepfather. There, Eva studied ophthalmology and later worked as an eye specialist. She married and had two children.
Lidice is one of the symbols of Nazi terror during the Second World War. A total of 340 Lidice residents were killed. After the war, 143 women and 17 children from Lidice returned to their homeland.
