International Children's Day
Today is an international holiday for children and young people, observed in more than 40 countries and regions around the world, from the 1949 Congress of the International Federation of Women for Democracy in Moscow, Soviet Union, and related initiatives to commemorate the Lidice massacre of 1942.
In November 1949, the International Democratic Women's Federation, abbreviated as the International Federation of Women (FDIM/WIDF), is an international organization focused on women's rights and interests and a member of the United Nations non-governmental organization. A meeting of the Executive Committee was held in Moscow, USSR. Helen Gabrozo, a member of the Executive Committee of the Italian Women's Union, proposed on behalf of the IWF Secretariat that June 1 be designated as International Children's Day to commemorate the 88 children in the Czech village of Lidice, who were massacred by Nazi Germany on June 10, 1942, and all the children around the world who died in the fascist war of aggression.
Lidice after being massacred by the Nazis in 1942
The Lidice massacre was an act of destruction in June 1942 against Lidice in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (present-day Czech Republic) on the orders of Adolf Hitler and Kurt Darüg, successor of SS leader Heinrich Himmler.
In retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, protector of the Reinhard Heydrich, by local villagers in late spring 1942, all 173 men over the age of 15 in the village were executed on June 10, 1942. Eleven other men were also killed, and the rest were also detained. Of the village's 503 residents, 307 women and children were sent to the temporary detention centre at the Kladno School. Of these, 184 women and 88 children were deported to concentration camps; Only seven children who could be Germanized because of their pure blood were handed over to SS families, and the rest of the villagers were sent to the gas chambers of the Chelmno extermination camp for murder.
The Associated Press quoted German radio broadcasts it received in New York as saying: "All the adult men in the town were shot, while the women were held in concentration camps and the children were sent to appropriate educational institutions." About 340 people from Lidice were killed in German reprisals (192 men, 60 women and 88 children).
Gaporozo noted that the purpose of the section is to improve children's lives by guaranteeing children's rights to survival, health care and education around the world. In 1954, June 1 was designated as the "International Day for the Protection of Children" to protect children's rights and children's right to learning, and to end child labor, which increased the international recognition of the day as Children's Day.