Proposed new names have included: Sayville Heights, after the town immediately to the south; Lidice, after a Czech town destroyed by Nazi troops during World War II; and MacArthur, after the airport built in the 1940s (the airport is named for famed American General Douglas MacArthur).
Churches and chapels were closed, and a rounding up of Czechs was conducted, including the whole village of Lidice, whose inhabitants were either killed or sent to forced labor camps.
The town was renamed on 31 October 1943, from Potrero, to commemorate the town of Lidice in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (The Czech Republic today) which was razed to the ground by the SS on June 10, 1942 as a retribution for the assassination or Reinhard Heydrich.
After the Lidice massacre in Czechoslovakia in 1942, Kenton joined the British "Lidice Shall Live" organisation.
Lidice |
The WFYS also paid tribute to the Czech cities of Lidice and Ležáky, which were eradicated as a response to the assassination of the German governor Reinhard Heydrich, nicknamed The Butcher of Prague.
The Czech village of Lidice, as part of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was on orders from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler completely destroyed by German forces in reprisal for the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich in the late spring of 1942.