THE DEAD LOOK ON

The tragedy of Lidice (called Dudicks, here) is the factual background for this skincrawling story of brutal barbarity. A German officer has been killed; chance leads to the choice of this village as a victim, paratroops invade, and the townspeople are helpless under the indignities, bestialities and cruelties they are forced to suffer. Destructive invasion, the killing of a dog and his master, the stripping of church and houses of all scrap, the herding of all the men, all the women, all the children in separate places, kept in ignorance of their fate, the murder of a recently delivered mother, the raping of a child, the torture of a boy, the suppression of the information that a mistake has been made, -- all this leads grimly to the digging of a communal grave by the men who are to lie there; the distribution of women and children to camps and training centers; the razing of the town. A tale of horror against innocents that loses nothing of its raw shudders as a novel.