The anniversary of the assassination of Heydrich commemorated at the Anthropoid memorial in Prague

People in Prague today commemorated the 84th anniversary of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich at the Anthropoid memorial. The Czech Republic marks the anniversary as an important day under the name Day of National Defiance. At the site of the attack by paratroopers on the acting Reich Protector, several dozen people gathered today at the memorial, along with scouts and representatives of the Orel organisation.

Near the bend where Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík carried out the attack on Heydrich stands a memorial commemorating their act. The most powerful man of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia at the time, and one of the co-creators of the Holocaust, died a few days later. Immediately after the assassination, brutal Nazi retaliation followed – martial law, mass executions and arrests, and the destruction of Lidice and Ležáky villages. Kubiš, Gabčík and five other paratroopers fell on 18 June 1942 after a battle against overwhelming odds in the Orthodox Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Resslova Street.