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Embassy Commemorates Lidice - June 10, 5 pm

(This article expired 09.06.2013.)

The Embassy of the Czech Republic commemorates the 70th anniversary of the Lidice massacre with a special screening of the documentary In the Shadow of Memory with co-producer Jerry Zbiral and the opening of the exhibition Return of Lidice Women on June 10 at 5 pm.

Event Details:
Date:
June 10, 2012 at 5 pm
Location: Embassy of the Czech Republic
3900 Spring of Freedom Street, NW, Washington, DC 20008

About the Exhibition Return of Lidice Women:
After the arrival of German units, women were gathered and escorted to grammar school in Kladno from where they were deported to the concentration camp in Ravensbruck. The exhibition provided by the Lidice Memorial (Czech Republic) includes 9 panels which map emotional destinies of these women, accentuated by the loss of their husbands and children.

About the Film  In the Shadow of Memory:
This film is an exploration of the ongoing effects of tragedy on future generations. It is based on the life-story of Jerri Zbiral, whose mother and sister survived the Nazi destruction of the Czech village of Lidice during World War II. The stories had a profound impact on Jerri’s life. The village of Lidice was destroyed in 1942, in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a mastermind of Nazi genocide. All the men were murdered, all women were sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, all but 9 of 91 children were gassed. After the war, the women who survived the concentration camp, including Jerri Zbiral's mother and half-sister, returned to Lidice. Filmed in the Czech Republic and Evanston, Illinois, In the Shadow of Memory consists of interviews with survivors, German visitors to the 50th anniversary memorial, and Jerri’s family, including her children.

Dir.: Jacky Comforty, 2007, 52 min.

Jerri Zbiral (née Jaroslava Irena Zbiralova) was born in Prague. Her mother Anna and half-sister Eva were survivors of the Lidice tragedy in 1942. Jerri’s mother spent the last three years of WWII in Ravensbrueck concentration camp, while Jerri’s sister Eva was sent to live with an aunt in Germany as part of the Nazi Lebensborn program. Jerri’s mother walked back to Czechoslovakia after the war and was reunited with Jerri’s sister. Following the communist coup in 1948, the family left Czechoslovakia. In 1982, Jerri started to record the stories of her relatives and others who had survived the Lidice massacre. Ten years later, she and her husband Alan Teller, created the film In the Shadow of Memory about the tragedy and her own relationship to the event.