LEAMINGTON SPA, HEYDRICH. AND TRAGEDY AT LIDICE

CLOSE TO WARWICK, there is a town that reminded me both of Brighton on the south coast of England and Mariánské Lázně (Marienbad) in the Czech Republic. The grandiose architecture, mostly neo-classical, of Leamington Spa reminds me of some parts of Brighton and the area around the town’s spa buildings, both new and old, brought faint recollections of visits I made long ago to the Czech spa town to my mind. What I did not know when we visited Leamington Spa was that it does have a not too distant historical relationship with what was once known as ‘Czechoslovakia’.

 

The Jephson memorial

SS General Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) was one of the main ‘architects’ of the Holocaust and in 1942 he was the acting Governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the area now known as the Czech Republic. In January 1942, he was Chairman of the Wannsee Conference at which the terrible fate of the Jewish people was decided. On the 27^th of May 1942, Heydrich was shot at while driving through Prague. During this attack, a hand grenade, thrown into his open top vehicle, exploded. Heydrich was rushed to hospital but died of his wounds or sepsis resulting from them early in the morning of the 4^th of June. His senior, the Chancellor of Germany, the dictator Adolf Hitler, was furious.

The Czechoslovak monument

 

The assassination attack was carried out by Czechoslovak men who had been trained in England and then parachuted into Czechoslovakia. The men were volunteers, who were members of the Free Czechoslovak Forces stationed in the Warwickshire town of Royal Leamington Spa, where there was a training camp for them. It had been there since 1940. Seven of the Czechoslovak men flew from England in December 1941 and parachuted at various paces over their native land. Two of them, Jozef Gabčík (1912-1942) and Jan Kubiš (1913-1942), carried out the attack in Prague that led to the ending of Heydrich’s life. These two men and the others dropped over Czechoslovakia sacrificed their lives in the struggle to free their country from Nazi tyranny.

 

The7 Czechs who were parachuted in 1941

In November 2021, we paid a brief visit to Leamington Spa. Amongst its attractions is the pleasant Jephson Gardens, which are close to the spa establishments after which the town gets its name. The Park is named after the physician and philanthropist Henry Jephson (1798-1878), who promoted the superior healing powers of the town’s spring water. An attractive circular neo-classical temple containing a statue of Jephson was erected in his honour in 1849. This stands atop a small mound. Close to it there is another monument, also circular.

 

Parachutes with the Czech heros' names

The other monument was unveiled in 1968, 50 years after the formation of Czechoslovakia out of the ruins of the failed Austro-Hungarian Empire. The memorial is in the form of a circular fountain. A bowl is supported by a single pillar on which the heraldic emblem of Czechoslovakia can be seen in bas-relief. Something, which at first sight resembles a large mushroom, sprouts upwards from the centre of the bowl. Closer examination of this reveals that it is a sculpture depicting a cluster of open parachutes. On each parachute, there is a name of one of the group of volunteers who parachuted into Czechoslovakia. The monument was designed by John French.

The Czechoslovak monument

 

According to a noticeboard close to the Czechoslovak volunteers’ memorial, this small fountain also remembers the thousands of Czechoslovak citizens, who were murdered by the Nazis in reprisal for Heydrich’s death. After numerous arrests were made, two Czech villages suspected of having been involved in the assassination plot, Lidice and Ležáky were literally wiped off the face of the earth by the Nazis. Their innocent inhabitants were mostly killed, but some were sent to concentration camps. These poor people are remembered in Jephson Park, which is such a lovely place that one would not think that it could possibly be even remotely associated with the human tragedies that followed the death of a monstrous member of the Nazi party.

The former pump rooms at Leamington Spa

ROAMING WITH THE ROMA

The Gypsies (aka ‘Roma’ or ‘Rom’) are much maligned and misunderstood. Two books written by the Belgian Jan Yoors present the nomads of Europe in a positive and life-enhancing light. 

Here are my reviews of his two books.

 "THE GYPSIES"

I first learned of the existence of this extraordinarily fascinating book by Jan Yoors when I was reading Fonseca's book about gypsies (Roma), "Bury me Standing". Published in 1967, this book is available from on-line second-hand stores.

Sometime in between the 2 world wars, Jan Yoor, a young Belgian teenager, did something very unusual. He ran away with the gypsies. He joined a group ('kumpania') of Roma camping near to his home, and was eventually adopted by them. His understanding parents did not seem to mind him being away from home and school for long periods whilst he wandered around Europe with his new companions.

Yoor's first-hand experiences of living the life of a young gypsy were not wasted. Years later, he described them in his book "The Gypsies". His account of living with the Roma is detailed and seems accurate. Yet, it is not a dispassionate anthropological study. As I read his book, I felt that I was almost experiencing the trials and tribulations of life on the road with the gypsies. Yoors shows a deep understanding of the subtleties of the Roma mentality, and describes their beliefs, traditions, and daily life, exquisitely. At times, his writing has a poetic quality, yet it never becomes trite or flowery. The Roma could not have wished for a more sympathetic yet objective description of their lives than that written by Yoors.

Read this gracious book, and you will see the Roma in an entirely new light.

"CROSSING"

This book is written by the Belgian Jan Yoors. It is the second of his books that I have read. In his first book “The Gypsies” he describes how he began living with a gypsy (Rom) ‘cumpania’ as a teenager, and begun to learn about their ways of life whilst they gradually accepted him as one of their own kind. In the second book, “Crossing”, Yoors, by now regarded as a fully-fledged Rom by the cumpania that had adopted him and also by other Rom that he met, writes about his experiences with the Rom community during the Second World War (‘WW2’).

The Allied authorities fighting the Germans realised that the Rom were eminently suited to assist the efforts of the Resistance in France. Monsieur Henri recruits Yoors to become an intermediary between the Rom and the mysterious groups who worked incognito to organise acts of resistance against the Germans. All goes well for a while, but inevitably Yoors is arrested by the Nazi security police.

As in his first book, Yoors writes lyrically and sensitively about the Rom and what he learned about their idiosyncratic philosophy of life. It was what he learnt from his fellow Rom that helped him survive the most horrendous imprisonment and interrogations.

The last and very exciting part of the book describes Yoors’s role in smuggling people from Axis-occupied Europe across the Pyrenees into Franco’s neutral Spain.

After the war, Yoors became an artist in the USA, specialising in tapestry. This book, like his first, is a work of - art a fascinating tapestry of words beautifully woven together.

Read more about Jan Yoors on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Yoors

Read books about migration by Adam Yamey :

Click: HERE!