page_title: Barnett Stross
section_title: Lidice Shall Live
hierarchical_section_title: Barnett Stross / Lidice Shall Live
caption_attribution_description: British WWII propaganda poster commemorating the village of Lidice
context_page_description: Sir Barnett Stross was a British doctor and politician. He served twenty years as a Labour Party Member of Parliament, famously led the humanitarian campaign "Lidice Shall Live" and pushed for reforms in industry to protect workers. His grand-nephew Charles Stross is an author.
context_section_description: Stross did not confine himself to medical issues. He also led a campaign to rebuild Lidice, a Czechoslovak village which had been destroyed by Nazi forces during the Second World War in a 1942 massacre under orders from Adolf Hitler, who was enraged by the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich by British trained Czech resistance fighters. On 10 June 1942 Nazi soldiers entered Lidice and ultimately killed all of the village's men. Women and children were separated and taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Only 146 of the women are known to have survived, while 88 children were killed; only 17 younger children survived the tragedy having been placed with German families (these children returned to Lidice after the war). Lidice was then razed to the ground in order to wipe it off the map for ever. News of the tragedy soon reached the rest of the world as it was filmed and broadcast by the Nazis.
  Stross was deeply affected by the Lidice tragedy. Immediately after news of the event reached Stoke-on-Trent he spoke to miners and their leaders, proposing the reconstruction of the village of Lidice to commemorate this crime against humanity forever. On the afternoon of Sunday 6 September, in The Victoria Hall, the "Lidice Shall Live" movement was formed in the presence of Czechoslovak President, Edvard Beneš, Will Lawther, President of the Miners' Federation, and Soviet Ambassador Bogomolov. The name of the movement came about in defiant response to Adolf Hitler's proclamation that "Lidice shall die". Barnett Stross vehemently replied, "Lidice Shall Live!"
  An audience of 3,000 men and women heard Dr Benes' concluding remarks: "This meeting has made it clear that Lidice has not died: it lives on in the hearts of the people of Stoke-on-Trent at least. From now on, Stoke-on-Trent will forever in the heart of every Czech citizen".
  In the months that followed, from its base in Stoke-on-Trent fund-raising campaigns were organised, collecting donations from British miners and workers to pay for the construction of a new Lidice. In 1947 Lidice began to be rebuilt with the help of the £32,000 raised by people from the Potteries, this included more than 150 modern state of the art homes. In 1955 Barnett led an initiative to construct the world's largest rose garden with 23,000 roses donated by numerous countries around the world. For this work, on 18 June 1947 Stross was honoured by the Czechoslovak government with the White Lion of Czechoslovakia, and he became Chair of the British-Czechoslovakia Society, using this position to highlight human rights abuses under the Communist government.
  Sir Barnett Stross considered the establishment of the movement to support Lidice, its genesis in Stoke-on-Trent, but growing worldwide, his greatest personal success. He said that the success lay neither in the big sum that had been collected for the rebuilding of Lidice nor in the beautiful Rose Garden nor in the Lidice Collection which he had founded. He saw the success in the fact that the news about the slaughter of innocent people had flown around the world, converting the crime committed by the Nazis into a weapon of peace.
  In October 2013 a sculpture commemorating the Lidice Shall Live movement was unveiled. The 6.8-metre-high (22 ft) steel sculpture cost £100,000 to build and features 3,000 tags bearing the initials of people who promise to share the story of the movement.  North Staffordshire-based Dashyline was commissioned by Stoke-on-Trent City Council to create the artwork, which has been installed near Hanley bus station and took three years to complete.
caption: A "Lidice shall live" poster
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