International Museum Day

Today is International Museum Day. My local museum is undergoing a major refurbishment, so most of it is closed. The Spitfire gallery, theatre and cafe are still open, and there’s a small display of items chosen by museum staff.

On Friday, the family went to a film screening (the local cult film club shows films in the museum theatre). During the intermission, we had a drink in the cafe, and I saw the key in the photo.

The key is the key to Lidice. It was presented to the Lord Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent in 2017, when they visited Lidice to mark the 75th anniversary of the massacre and destruction of the village. There are only three such keys, and the fact that one was given to Stoke-on-Trent is a mark of the connection between the two communities, a connection born of atrocity and compassion.

I tell the full story in A Ray of Light, but the short version is that in 1942, Hitler ordered the Czech village of Lidice to be destroyed in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.

The village was completely (and literally) erased, even being removed from maps. At the end of the process, there was nothing left. But a doctor in Stoke-on-Trent galvanised the local miners into action, and they raised the equivalent of nearly two million pounds in today’s money.

That money was used to rebuild the village, and it still stands today. Hitler had wanted the memory of Lidice to die, but the village still lives on, with a monument to all those that have been killed in war.

The people of Stoke-on-Trent should be very proud of what their ancestors did for Lidice. The key is a powerful reminder of the atrocity and the compassion with which it was answered.