State dignitaries honour memory of paratroopers who killed Heydrich 77 years ago

State dignitaries as well as war veterans and hundreds of members of the public gathered at Prague’s Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius on Tuesday. They were marking the 77th anniversary of the heroic last stand of seven paratroopers, who were involved in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the governor of the occupied Czech lands during WWII.

Speaking at the gathering, Defence Minister Lubomír Metnar said that it was important to remember such acts. Deputy Premier Jan Hamáček and the speaker of the lower house of Parliament Radek Vondráček laid wreaths at the memorial.

In a project which took place earlier in 2019, researches from the Military History Institure found two new areas within the church crypts that show where the paratroopers were trying to dig themselves out of their encirclement by Nazi troops.