1932–2021

Marie Šupikova

Marie Šupikova, born Doležalová, was one of the nine Lidice children who survived racial selection and forced “Germanization” (everyone else in the village of Lidice was killed or transported to concentration camps). Her father was shot in Lidice and her mother was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Marie Šupikova at the Nuremberg trials
Marie Šupikova at the Nuremberg trials

In a children’s home near Poznań, Marie and other “selected” children underwent so-called “re-education”. There, speaking Czech was forbidden and severely punished. After a year, she was given a German name, Ingeborg Schiller, and, as an orphan, placed with a German family. For three years, that is, until 1946, she lived with them, first in Poznań, Poland, and later in Boizenburg, Germany.

After the war, her adoptive family reported her to the Czech authorities and Marie Doležalová returned to Czechoslovakia.

At the age of 15, Marie testified as one of three witnesses to the massacre in Lidice at the RuSHA trial, one of the subsequent Nuremberg trials.