Prague, June 5 (CTK) – Slovak President Andrej Kiska wanted to award the two paratroopers, one Slovak and one Czech, who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich in Prague 75 years ago, together with Czech President Milos Zeman, but Prague rejected this, weekly Respekt writes in its latest issue today.
It writes that the Czech Presidential Office did not give the reasons.
Zeman’s spokesman Jiri Ovcacek dismissed the information as a lie. He said Kiska did not make any such proposal.
Kiska alone eventually promoted the Slovak paratrooper, Jozef Gabcik, to the rank of major general in memoriam two weeks ago.
The two Czechoslovak paratroopers, Gabcik and Jozef Kubis, trained in Britain, attacked Heydrich, high Nazi official and Acting Reich-Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, in Prague on May 27, 1942. He succumbed to the injuries sustained on June 4.
“Andrej Kiska’s team proposed that each president award one paratrooper, Kiska Gabcik and Zeman Kubis. This was to happen at a meeting held on this occasion. One of the considered places was the Church of Ss Cyril and Methodius in Prague, in which they and other fighters went into hiding after the attack. They eventually died there after a bloody shoot-out,” server Aktualne writes today referring to Respekt’s finding.
Kiska’s spokesman Roman Krpelan refused to comment on the issue. “No comment,” he told CTK.
According to information from diplomatic circles, representatives of the two heads of state’s offices discussed the matter twice, but it eventually went to nothing because of the Czechs disinterest.
“No positive answer was made by Prague,” a knowledgeable diplomatic source said.
The Slovaks were not informed of the reasons.
Ovcacek rejected Respekt’s article as a “brutal lie.” “Andrej Kiska did not submit any such proposal,” Ovacacek tweeted.
The article’s author, Ondrej Kundra, writes that the rejection may have been caused by Zeman’s health condition and fatigue.
“However, fear of the reaction of the president’s core may have also been the reason,” he wrote.
The awarding of members of the Western resistance might be negatively perceived mainly by Zeman’s leftist supporters, Kundra wrote.
They perceive the attack negatively mainly because of the extensive repressions with which the Nazis reacted to it.
Ovcacek wrote that last year, Zeman bestowed state decorations on Czechoslovak RAF wartime pilots.
The victims included two Czech villages, Lidice, central Bohemia, and Lezaky, east Bohemia. They were obliterated by the Nazis and their inhabitants were executed or sent to concentration camps.
The attack on Heydrich, the biggest act of the domestic anti-Nazi resistance in Europe, reinforced the position of the Czechoslovak government in exile. It was also thanks to it that the western powers withdrew from the Munich Agreement of 1938, according to which Czechoslovak border areas were ceded to Germany. After the war, the Communists belittled the importance of the attack and mainly cited the bloody aftermath.
