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Reviewed by Melissa Tanaka for Readers' Favorite
A Ray of Light by Russell Phillips is the story of a massacre of an innocent village and the global community that rose up around it. While the piece is packed with information, it easily captivates readers with its poignant look back at history. Operation Anthropoid was created by the Czech government to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, a senior member of the Nazi party. Although there was no true connection between the assassination of Heydrich and Lidice, Hitler ordered that Lidice and its memory be eradicated.
The townspeople were either killed or sent to an extermination camp and the town itself was set afire and bulldozed over, with its name being removed from official records and maps that showed the village was destroyed. The demolition of Lidice was publicly broadcast in order to discourage any further assassination attempts and demonstrate the strength of the Nazis; however, such an injustice served to strengthen the resolve of the Allied nations. The Lidice Shall Live Campaign was started in September of 1942 to raise funds to pay for a new village and in 1949 the first part of the village was completed a few hundred feet from the original site, which remained as a memorial to the dead.
Phillips captures the horrific events that unfolded, as well as the resilience of the survivors and support of the nations that rallied alongside Lidice. Despite the atrocities that this community faced, the survivors returned to the new village and stories such as this one were written, thus ensuring that Lidice shall never be forgotten. Wow, just wow. This was a part of history that I had never heard about and I wish I had sooner. The author has done a wonderful job in capturing the resilience of both survivors and the countries that supported Lidice, and it was well worth the read.
