Prague, April 10 (CTK) – Five new memorial plaques marking the 75th anniversary of the Operation Anthropoid, which succeeded in killing high Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich during the German occupation of the country, will be installed in Prague-Vinohrady and two of them were unveiled today.
The unveiling ceremony was attended by war veterans, historians and relatives of the executed resistance fighters.
The two memorial plaques in the Italska Street remember two married couples who were arrested and executed because they provided aid to the paratroopers that made an attempt at Heydrich’s life in Prague.
Heydrich succumbed to the wounds he suffered in the attack by Czechoslovak paratroopers Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis in May 1942.
Mr and Mrs Bergauer who lived in Italska Street hid British pilot Ronald Littledale who escaped from a prisoner or war camp. Doctor Sobeslav Sobek asked his colleague to treat Kubis’s wounded eye.
The two married couples were among more than 200 Czechoslovak patriots who were executed in Mauthausen in October 1942.
A state of emergency was declared in the occupied country after Heydrich’s assassination. Thousands of people ended up in prison and 1590 of them were executed. The Nazis razed to the ground two Czech villages, Lidice and Lezaky.
The paratroopers hid in a Prague church, but they were revealed and died after heavy fighting, two weeks after Heydrich’s death.
The Greek word “anthropoid” means a great ape or a human who is not human.
Several events will mark the 75th anniversary of the resistance movement operation in Prague.
In the Karlovo namesti square, a replica of a tented camp, in which Czechoslovak paratroopers lived in Britain in 1941, will be built in June, Prague District Two Mayor Jana Cernochova said.
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