Assassins of leading Nazi Heydrich finally honoured with Prague statue

It’s 67 years today since one of the most audacious acts of resistance against the Nazi occupiers – the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, acting Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, by Czechoslovak parachutists. For six decades there’s been no memorial to commemorate the act - an act for which the parachutists and hundreds of innocent Czechoslovaks paid a terrible price. That, however, has now changed with the unveiling of a bronze statue on the spot where Heydrich was killed.

Photo: CTK

A Czech pipe band dressed in World War II uniforms performed for a crowd of several hundred who gathered on Wednesday for the unveiling of the 11-metre statue to Operation Anthropoid – the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942. At the top of the statue are three bronze figures, their arms outstretched as if preparing to jump out of an aircraft. Marie Halíková was a pupil at the nearby Na Korábě school when the assassination took place.

“I was here when it happened – I used to go to school just round the corner. We heard this terrible noise – a loud bang – and so us kids all jumped up to see where it had come from. It was an event that was obviously planned in a military way; the assassination was ordered by President Beneš in London and the parachutists were simply carrying out his orders. But what happened afterwards… well, that was something that reflected the times we were living in.”

Photo: CTK

Reinhard Heydrich’s cruelty and devotion to the Nazi cause was legendary, and he was even tipped as a potential successor to Hitler. He also showed an arrogant disregard for his own safety. Each day he would travel to work in an open-top Mercedes limousine from his villa outside Prague.

At 10.35 am, on May 27th, 1942, two Czechoslovak parachutists sprang into his path as his car slowed to turn a hairpin bend in the Prague suburb of Kobylisy. The first, Jozef Gabčík, was carrying a sub-machine gun, but it jammed, and he sprinted away. The second, Jan Kubiš, threw a bomb at the car – Heydrich survived, but fragments from the explosion are believed to caused the septicaemia that took his life a week later.

His death caused a furious and brutal reaction from the Nazis, with hundreds of ordinary people, many with no connection to the attack, executed or sent to concentration camps. The statue itself pays tribute to them - two of the bronze figures are in uniform; the third is a civilian. Jiří Navrátil, vice-chairman of the Czech Boy Scouts, was a teenager when Heydrich was killed.

“Actually I think that it is the most important day, because all the world could see that the Czech people – in spite of all the old history – were against Nazism and would be free.”

But you paid a terrible price for killing Heydrich – the razing of Lidice and the thousands sent to concentration camps and so on. Was it worth it?

“Well, yes. That was war, you see. It’s necessary in war to fight.”

That sentiment was shared by many – both war veterans and others – at Wednesday’s ceremony. The campaign for a memorial began as soon as war ended in 1945, but for four decades was suppressed by the communists, keen to hide the fact that the most successful act of resistance against the Nazis was planned in London, not Moscow. Now, 67 years after the event, Jozef Gabčík, Jan Kubiš and all the others involved in Operation Anthropoid finally have the monument they deserve.