Operation Anthropoid
History is alive in the streets of Prague. The four of us had received our bikes that day and were checking them out, riding down Resslova Street.
I had never been there before, but I suddenly recognized something on the building beside us – a horizontal slit marred by obvious bullet holes, the sidewalk covered with flowers. I had seen the movie “Anthropoid” recently and I recognized the opening into the crypt of the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius, where the final act of “Operation Anthropoid” had taken place on June 18, 1942.
The Czechoslovak government-in-exile in 1941 felt it needed to do something. They had troops of all sorts itching for action. A set of stamps from August 1945 shows exiled Czechoslovak soldiers and airmen in services of many countries. Notable is Slovak Josef Gabcik in a parachute helmet. He is shown again in a May 1992 stamp issue, together with fellow paratrooper Jan Kubis. These two were trained in England for a suicidal task, code-named Anthropoid. It was the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the largest remnant of dismembered Czechoslovakia.
Heydrich had run the mass- murdering Einsatzgruppen on the Eastern Front, had been the chairman of the Wannsee Conference that had planned out the “Final Solution” of the Jewish people, and now had been brutally loosed on the Czechs. Truly he was “The Man with the Iron Heart”, as a recent movie titled him.
Heydrich arrogantly drove the same route daily to Prague Castle in an open Mercedes, accompanied only by his SS driver. At a sharp turn on his route, the two paratroopers waited. As the car slowed down, Gabcik pulled a Sten gun from under his raincoat and pulled the trigger — it jammed! Partner Kubis tossed an-anti-tank grenade — it didn’t make it into the car! The car’s occupants got out and gave chase – it seemed like the attempt had failed. But Heydrich had been hit by fragments, and he died of infection after surgery. A dramatic 2017 stamp issued for the 75th anniversary of the assassination shows the Sten, the grenade and the damaged Mercedes.
The funeral in Berlin was the largest ever held by the Nazis. Heinrich Himmler gave the eulogy and Adolf Hitler was said to be genuinely upset- Heydrich was a very likely successor. A black mourning stamp was issued, featuring the death mask of Heydrich. He looks amazingly peaceful for such a monster.
Through torture and the help of a traitor, the Anthropoid paratroops and 5 others were eventually located hiding in the crypt of Saints Cyril and Methodius Church. 750 SS troops laid siege to the building that was defended by these lightly armed men, who partly spread into the choir loft and held the attackers off for over two hours. Tear gas and finally water from fire department hoses was poured into the crypt opening. The surviving defenders eventually committed suicide.
Retribution came swiftly. The church bishop, priests and elders were executed, as well as an estimated 5000 other citizens. Nazi intelligence mistakenly linked the assassins to the villages of Lidice and Lezaky, and residents there were shot or sent to concentration camps and their towns levelled.
Postage stamps remembering Lidice and Lezaky have been issued about every five years since. They seem to be a way for Czech citizens to handle the grief of wartime atrocities. The first stamp, from June 1947, is very striking — a black stamp showing a white hooded face with dark hollows for eyes, titled simply LIDICE. The 18 others over the years show a litany of ruins, crying faces, wilted flowers, barbed wire and tormented sculptures. They make for a very sad collection.
The church crypt is now a moving shrine. We stood silently in the dim room beside seven busts surrounded by flowers and candles. It is unchanged; the bullet holes and a larger scar where the trapped men tried to hack through the brickwork are still there. The church above is still in active use, so it doesn’t appear that hate has triumphed.