Prague in the Third Reich: Gestapo Terror, the Heydrich Assassination, and Urban Resistance

Map of Prague during the German occupation. Predominantly German since the Middle Ages until around 1860, Prague increasingly saw conflict between its ethnic groups. Czechoslovakia itself had been formed after the Great War and saw itself heavily burdened by inter-ethnic conflicts. Nevertheless it was one of the few states in Europe that remained democratic until the end of the 1930s. At the 1930 census, 42,000 Prague citizens gave German as their mother tongue, living mainly in the city centre.  The fate of democratic Czechoslovakia was finally sealed with the Munich Agreement in 1938 and the invasion of the Wehrmacht on Hitler's orders the following year. Prague became the capital of the newly established Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. That year saw about 120,000 Jews living in the Bohemia, many of them in Prague. The Nazis would eventually murder around 78,000 of them. On May 27, 1942 resistance fighters managed to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the deputy Reichsprotektor. When Hitler's suicide was announced in Prague on May 1, 1945, the three-day memorial service ordered from Berlin took place without resistance. 

Standing on Wenceslas Square and a Wehrmacht military parade down the same stretch in March 1939 after Germany treacherously broke the Munich agreement and took Bohemia and Moravia, leaving Slovakia as a rump, puppet state. This action was sometimes described by the Germans as the Zerschlagung der Rest-Tschechei (breaking up the rest of Bohemia), Griff nach Prag (reaching for Prague) or Erledigung der Rest-Tschechei (settlement of the rest of Bohemia). From the point of view of international and Czechoslovak law, this was a disguised form of illegal annexation, with the legal government being the government-in-exile in London, led by President Beneš  From the German point of view at the time, it was a legal and peaceful occupation based on the joint statement of the Czechoslovak and German governments of March 15, 1939. In this statement, Czechoslovakia was considered an artificially created state, ahistorically tearing the Czech lands out of the living space of the German nation, internally unable to exist and representing a focus of instability, threatening European peace. 
That morning of March 15 German troops entered the remaining Czech parts of Czechoslovakia, meeting practically no resistance with the only instance of organised resistance taking place in Místek where an infantry company commanded by Karel Pavlík fought invading German troops. The Hungarian invasion of Carpatho-Ukraine encountered resistance but the Hungarian army quickly crushed it. The next day Hitler himself arrived and from Prague Castle proclaimed the German protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The British historian Victor Rothwell wrote that the Czechoslovak reserves of gold and hard currency seized in March 1939 were "invaluable in staving off Germany's foreign exchange crisis". In addition, the Germans seized all of the factories for making weapons, mines that provided crucial raw materials for the armament program of the Four Year Plan and a "huge weapons haul, including nearly 500 tanks and nearly 1600 aircraft".

 Besides violating his promises at Munich, the annexation of the rest of Czechoslovakia was, unlike Hitler's previous actions, not described in Mein Kampf. After having repeatedly stated that he was interested only in pan-Germanism, the unification of ethnic Germans into one Reich, Germany had now conquered seven million Czechs.

The feelings of Czechs as the Germans annexed their country can clearly be seen in their expressions of hatred and anger seen on the left.

Hitler's proclamation creating the protectorate on March 16 claimed that "Bohemia and Moravia have for thousands of years belonged to the Lebensraum of the German people". British public opinion changed drastically after the invasion. Chamberlain realised that the Munich Agreement had meant nothing to Hitler. Chamberlain told the British public on March 17, during a speech in Birmingham, that Hitler was attempting "to dominate the world by force".

Subsequently, interwar Czechoslovakia has been idealised by its proponents as the only bastion of democracy surrounded by authoritarian and fascist regimes. It has also been condemned by its detractors as an artificial and unworkable creation of intellectuals supported by the great powers. Interwar Czechoslovakia comprised lands and peoples that were far from being integrated into a modern nation-state. Moreover, the dominant Czechs, who had suffered political discrimination under the Habsburgs, were not able to cope with the demands of other nationalities; however, some of the minority demands served as mere pretexts to justify intervention by Germany. Czechoslovakia was able to maintain a viable economy and a democratic political system under the adverse circumstances of the interwar period.

The National Museum on the left after the Americans ceded Czechoslovakia to Stalin a decade after Munich. It was not until Soviet troops approached the city that, on the afternoon of May 4, there was armed uprising. On May 9, troops of General Vlasov, who had previously fought alongside the Wehrmacht, reached the city and were thus able to support the insurgents. The Red Army finally took over Prague after fierce resistance. By order of the Soviet dictator Stalin many members of the Prague units of the Vlasov army were imprisoned as well as Vlasov himself.  Immediately after the end of the war in May 1945, most of the Germans were expelled. Many of them were interned whilst roughly five thousands were killed or died in the detention centres. In 1945, as part of the Beneš decrees, the Hungarians residing in Prague were expropriated and until 1947 partially driven out to Hungary or forcibly evicted. In February 1948, Prague fell under the communist regime of Klement Gottwald. During the Prague Spring of 1968, a peaceful attempt was made to replace the prevailing authoritarian socialism with liberal reforms into a "socialism with a human face". This was crushed by Warsaw Pact forces at gunpoint on August 21. In September 1989, refugees from East Germany, who had sought refuge in the German embassy, were allowed to leave for the West. In November 1989, Prague was the scene of the so-called Velvet Revolution , which meant the end of the socialist regime in Czechoslovakia .

One can't go anywhere in Prague without coming across such memorials to those killed in the last few days of the war. These, literally a corner from each other, remember two killed on May 5, 1945. As Soviet forces approached from the east and American forces from the west, Czech resistance fighters seized the opportunity to rise against the German occupiers. The uprising was not merely a spontaneous act but had been in the planning stages for some time, coordinated by the Czech National Council. The violence that ensued was multifaceted, involving not just Czechs and Germans, but also other ethnic groups and political factions. Hobsbawm argues that the uprising was a manifestation of nationalist fervour, a final act of defiance against years of oppressive rule. However, his typical Marxist view oversimplifies the complex motivations behind the violence for whilst nationalism undoubtedly played a role, the uprising was also fuelled by ideological battles between communists and non-communists within the Czech resistance. 

My GIFs on the left and below show Staromestske Namesti on that day and today with the wife. Mazower contends that the violence was as much about settling old scores and establishing a new political order as it was about liberation. Indeed, the Czech National Council was deeply divided along ideological lines, and the uprising served as a battleground for these internal disputes. The Germans responded to the uprising with brutal force, employing tanks and heavy artillery against the poorly armed resistance. The violence was not limited to military confrontations; civilians were caught in the crossfire, and summary executions were carried out. Judt notes that the German retaliation was driven not just by military objectives but also by a desire to make an example of Prague, to deter further uprisings in other occupied territories.

The violence also had an ethnic dimension, particularly against the German-speaking minority in Prague. As the tide of the war turned, Czech nationalists saw an opportunity to exact revenge for years of occupation and subjugation. Kershaw posits that the violence against German civilians was a form of "ethnic cleansing," aimed at creating a homogeneous Czech state. This view is supported by the mass expulsions and killings of Germans, known as the "wild transfers," that occurred in the aftermath of the uprising. However, Burleigh argues that whilst there were instances of extreme violence against Germans, these weren't part of any coordinated, state-sponsored effort but rather spontaneous acts of revenge by individuals or small groups. The role of the Soviet Union in the violence is another point of contention among historians. Applebaum suggests that the Soviets had a vested interest in the outcome of the uprising, as they sought to establish a communist government in Czechoslovakia. According to her, the Soviets deliberately delayed their advance to allow the non-communist factions of the Czech resistance to be crushed by the Germans, thereby facilitating a communist takeover. Meanwhile Beneš had been advocating for a strong, independent Czechoslovakia post-war and was in talks with both Western Allies and the Soviet Union to secure this vision. Snyder suggests that Beneš was willing to make significant concessions to the Soviets to ensure their support, including the marginalisation of non-communist resistance groups. This political manoeuvring had a direct impact on the ground in Prague, as it emboldened communist factions within the resistance and sowed distrust among the various groups. The Czech resistance wasn't a monolithic entity but was fractured along ideological lines, much like the Czech National Council. The divisions weren't merely ideological but also tactical; different groups had different visions of how best to resist German occupation and what the post-war Czechoslovakia should look like. Tooze offers a nuanced view, suggesting that the resistance was a tapestry of local and national agendas, often working at cross-purposes. This internal discord was a significant factor in the violence that erupted during the Prague Uprising, as groups vied for control and influence, both over the German occupiers and over each other.

If hell on earth existed, than it existed in Prague after May the 5th, 1945. Old men, women and children were beaten to death and maimed. Rapes, barbaric cruelties, horror-scenarios of hellish proportions - here they had been let loose.

Luděk Pachman, Czechoslovak-German chess grandmaster, chess writer, and political activist.

German motorcycle division crossing the Charles Bridge March 15, 1939 in scenes Vladimir Putin's fascist regime is now re-enacting in 2014 using the same language Hitler had made earlier (replacing 'Germany' and 'Czechs' with 'Russia' and 'Ukraine':

- We will never attempt to subjugate foreign peoples. speech of May 27, 1933.

- We have no territorial claims to make in Europe. speech of March 7, 1936

- The German Reich Government shall thus unconditionally abide by the other articles governing the coexistence of the nations, including territorial provisions, and put into effect solely by means of peaceful understanding those amendments which become inevitable by virtue of the changing times. speech of May 21, 1935.
- It is the last territorial demand I shall make in Europe... I repeat here before you, once this issue has been resolved; there will no longer be any further territorial problems for Germany in Europe! speech of September 26, 1938.

- We do not want any Czechs at all. ibid.

 

Left: Outside the Bata shop where the Gestapo displayed evidence and the offer of a reward for information leading to the assassins of Reinhard Heydrich (see below). Right: Makeshift memorial to the victims of communism at the site where student Jan Palach set himself on fire to protest the regime.

The Old Town Square in the last days of the war and today with the wife.

           

"Prague in Fog"- Purported painting of Prague by Hitler. The artwork, executed in watercolor and ink on paper, shows the castle viewed from the Petřín Hill or similar vantage point, rendered in the precise architectural style characteristic of Hitler’s early cityscapes- rigid perspective, careful linework, and a somewhat sterile attention to structural detail rather than atmospheric impressionism. This painting surfaced at auction in November 2014 through Nate D. Sanders Auctions in Los Angeles, where it sold for approximately $25,000. The provenance traced back to a private collection in Austria, with previous ownership purportedly including a Czech family who acquired it in the 1930s. However, like many Hitler artworks, its authenticity remains disputed among art historians; no definitive catalog raisonné of his paintings exists, and the market is rife with forgeries. If authentic, the work would predate Hitler’s political career by over a decade, created when he was attempting to support himself as an artist in Vienna. 

 

Prague stood in for Munich in the terrible CBS television drama Hitler: Rise of Evil. Here Malá Strana seems to be used for Ludwigstraße as Hitler, played terribly by Robert Carlyle, returns to Munich after the war in April, 1919. The production chose Prague thanks to the Czech Republic offering significantly lower production costs compared to Germany, including cheaper labour, equipment hire, and location fees. Prague's historic architecture had survived the war almost entirely intact, providing streetscapes that could convincingly stand in for early twentieth-century Munich, Vienna, and Berlin without requiring extensive digital reconstruction or purpose-built sets. The Barrandov Studios in Prague, established in the 1930s and one of the largest film studio complexes in Europe, provided the interior stage space for controlled scenes including beer hall interiors, domestic settings, and the courtroom sequence after the November 1923 putsch. The specific use of Mala Strana here exploited the quarter's broad streets and neoclassical and Baroque facades, which when dressed with German-language signage, period vehicles, costumed extras, and military props could approximate Munich's monumental character on screen. The camera angles were kept tight and selective to avoid revealing distinctively Czech architectural details such as Prague's steeper roof pitches, more ornate Baroque ornamentation, and different building materials that would have broken the illusion for viewers familiar with Munich. The production dressed the streets with demobilised soldiers, revolutionary placards, and civilian extras to convey the political chaos of the Bavarian Soviet Republic period. Prague had by 2002 become a standard destination for period film and television productions set in Germanic or central European cities, with productions including Mission Impossible in 1996 and Amadeus in 1984 having previously exploited the city's intact historic fabric for similar reasons of cost and visual authenticity. 

Germans in front of the entrance and Orloj, the astronomical clock, at the southern wall of the Old Town Hall in 1943. The clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest one still operating. The Orloj suffered heavy damage on May 7 and especially May 8, 1945, during the Prague Uprising, when the Germans fired on the south-west side of the Old Town Square from several armoured vehicles in an unsuccessful attempt to destroy one of the centres of the uprising. The use of incendiary shells wreaked serious damage inside the chamber of the astronomical clock. By the time fire grenades were employed the entire building burnt down and with it the complete City archives burnt to ashes. The clockwork of the astronomical clock was taken apart and taken by cart to the workshop of the Hainz company in Prague-Holešovice. The hall and nearby buildings burned along with the wooden sculptures on the clock and the calendar dial face made by Josef Mánes. After significant effort, the machinery was repaired, the wooden Apostles restored by Vojtěch Sucharda, and the Orloj started working again in 1948.

The Jan Hus Memorial at the Prague Old Town Square during the occupation and me today. In 1913 Mussolini published his only non-fiction book, Giovanni Huss, il veridico in praise of Hus. The memorial was unveiled in 1915 to mark the 500th anniversary of Hus's death. On that same day, Tomáš Masaryk declared his intention to create an independent Czechoslovakia. Despite a ban on public celebrations by Habsburg authorities at the time, Prague citizens surreptitiously laid thousands of flowers at the base of the statue. An officially sanctioned rally was held at the monument in 1925 to celebrate the nation's resistance to Austrian rule during World War I. Shortly after the Nazi occupation began, between 30,000 and 40,000 people participated in a demonstration at the Hus statue. This rally was highly symbolic, allowing Czechs to reenact popular opposition to "German" rule whilst commemorating a mediæval hero who represented the nation's long-standing existence. 

Czech historians pointed to the Hussite period as proof that the nation, and national consciousness, predated the nineteenth century. In 1915 Masaryk, no doubt seeking to position himself as a successor to Hus, chose the five-hundredth anniversary of Hus’s death to declare his intention to create an independent Czechoslovakia. That same day, Czech leaders unveiled the Hus memorial in Prague. Habsburg leaders forbade any public celebration, but Prague citizens defied the ban and surreptitiously laid thousands of flowers at the base of the statue. Ten years later, in 1925, at an officially sanctioned rally centred around the monument, Czechoslovak leaders celebrated Hus’s death and the Czechs’ “resistance” to Austrian rule during World War I. In 1939, as in 1925, Czechs were commemorating many things: a medieval national hero, the nation’s long existence, and the creation of Czecho-slovakia. They were reenacting popular opposition to previous forms of“German” rule.”

Chad Bryant (40) Prague in Black

Swastikas adorning the Rudolfinum concert hall in 1943. at a farewell event for children being evacuated to the countryside to avoid Anglo-American bombing raids.

In the newly founded Czechoslovakia, the building became the site for the House of Representatives in 1920. Under the Nazis, the building was converted back into a concert hall. Initially, only Czech workers worked, who, it is said in Prague, deliberately removed the statue of Richard Wagner instead of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. After this "mistake" was exposed, the dismantling by German workers continued. According to the current state of knowledge, however, this anecdote is related in the novel Mendelssohn auf dem Dach by Jiří Weiltaken and never happened in reality, since there was never a statue of Wagner. In 1942, the Rudolfinum filmed the German feature film Journey into the Past. After the war, the Czechoslovak Parliament resided in the house again for a short time. Since 1946, however, the building has been used again as a concert and exhibition venue. 

During the war there were several air raids on Prague. The first attack was on October 5, 1941, from 01.16. to 03.15 when about four incendiary bombs were dropped over the city by British bombers. The second air raid occurred on November 15, 1944. Around noon, two planes of unknown origin dropped possibly a dozen bombs on the municipal power plant although the operating systems remained undamaged. Four bombs exploded in front of an outbuilding, injuring fifteen employees. In the surrounding residential buildings, people standing at windows are said to have been killed by splinters. About three bombs fell on the coal heap of the power plant and were later defused. The third air raid on Prague occurred on Ash Wednesday, February 14, 1945 and was carried out by the USAAF. According to American pilots, the bombing of the city was due to a mistake as a result of navigation errors - they were supposed to support the air raids on Dresden about a hundred kilometres north of Prague. Here about sixty American Eighth Air Force Boeing B-17s dropped 152 tonnes of bombs on various residential areas of Prague. The carpet of bombs hit areas at Vyšehrad, Vinohrady and Pankrác, among others. A total of 700 people died in the attack with 68 buildings completely destroyed and around 250 buildings badly damaged. Among them were some historically valuable houses such as the most magnificent synagogue in the city in Vinohrady and the Emmaus Monastery in Prague's New Town. The extent of the bombing was significantly less than that of the air raids on most German cities. Although the Americans often expressed their regret and saw the causes of their error in unfavourable weather conditions and an alleged similarity of Prague and Dresden from the air, the suspicion is still sometimes expressed that it could have been a targeted attack. According to witnesses, a group of bombers from a larger formation clearly separated from the other bombers and flew to Prague. However, most historians believe that the air raids on Prague were in fact accidental. The last and largest air raid on Prague was on Palm Sunday, March 25, 1945, also by the USAAF. This time it was a planned operation involving 650 bombers launched from Italy and escort fighters. The attack was aimed at the industrial plants in eastern Prague and the Prague-Kbely military airfield. According to the USAAF, Sunday was chosen for the attack to minimise human casualties in the factories. The attack took place under ideal conditions in twelve waves of about fifty aircraft each between 11.48 and 13.02 hrs. One Me 262 was shot down by the P-38 escort fighters near the Prague Zoo crashed. As a result of the attack, 235 dead, 417 injured, 90 buildings destroyed and 1360 badly damaged objects were recorded. 

In the 1930s, with the growing Nazi threat, the New German Theatre in Prague was among the bastions of democracy, serving as a refuge for artists fleeing from Germany. Political developments shortly before signing of the Munich Agreement along with financial problems however led the German Theatre Association to close the theatre in September 1938. The Czechoslovak state expressed an interest in the building. But the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939 and establishment of the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" thwarted its plans. Under the new title Deutsches Opernhaus, the theatre served for political assemblies of the Nazi Party, and for the occasional guest presentations by ensembles from the Reich. A radical change came in May 1945 following the fall of the Nazi-led government. A group of Czech artists headed by Alois Hába, Václav Kašlík, and Antonín Kurš founded the Theatre of the Fifth of May in the former German Opera House. For the first time the theatre became a home for Czech, rather than German opera. Today inside the theatre there are busts of former artists who had suffered Nazi persecution: Josef Čapek, Julius Fučík, Joe Jenčík, Václav Jiříkovský, Rudolf Karel, Anna Letenská, Vít Nejedlý, Josef Skřivan, Oldřich Stibor, Bedřich Václavek, Vladislav Vančura, František Zelenka. There is also a memorial plaque with verses of Stanislav Kostka Neumann, dedicated to the memory of theatre actors who died during the fascist occupation.

Former Gestapo HQ

The site of the Gestapo headquarters of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1941 with the entrance flanked by Nazi flags and today. Although the building has an historic appearance, it was in its time a modern reinforced concrete building that was fully air-conditioned, had a piped post office, a telephone exchange, a printing press and massive safes in the basement. 

Two months after the destruction of the rest of the Czech Republic, the Gestapo set up the Prague State Police Headquarters in the Petschek Palace as headquarters in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Shortly before, the Petschk family in Prague recognised the danger posed by the Nazi rulers and sold the building before emigrating to Britain. 

In the basement there were eleven cells in which interrogations took place until May 4, 1945. A total of about 36,000 people were interrogated here, an average of 16 people every day. These were Czechs, Germans, emigrants, resistance fighters, communists, Jews or common criminals. Several prisoners succumbed to torture, and quite a few were executed after interrogation in Pankrác prison or deported to concentration camps. One of the best known and in what is now the Czech Republic one of the most controversial prisoners was Julius Fučík. He'd been transferred from the Petschek Palace to Pankrác prison in April 1942 and would become a communist martyr after the war. Fučík is said to have written the Stalinist propaganda pamphlet Reportage written during his imprisonment, which many Czechs sarcastically refer to as the "Miracle of Pankrác" given how unlikely it was that a prisoner could write such a comprehensive work under such rigid conditions. In addition, after 1989 a fellow prisoner stated that Fučík had written his "reportage" as a privileged prisoner on behalf of the Gestapo. 

The entrance on the right flanked by ϟϟ flags and a Nazi flag inside. The Petschek Palace was a place of terror and was derogatorily called Pečkárna by the prisoners who were held under absolute control through constant strip searches and cell searches. Prisoners were continuously subjected to brutal harassment and torture; some chose suicide for fear of torture or the risk of betraying allies. Others saw no way out and, in order to save their lives, let themselves be recruited as informants. Others also collaborated completely voluntarily and received false documents produced in the Palais Petschek.

To members of the resistance, Petschk's palace was known as the "Bakery". During the war, about half a year after the occupation, the Gestapo took over this building and set up their main office here in  the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The infamous interrogations and torture of Czech patriots and resistance fighters took place here. Acting Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich had a court-martial established here, which in most cases sent convicts to execution or concentration camps. Many Czech patriots were martyred within the premises of this palace, a period commemorated by a memorial plaque located on the corner of the building. The Pečka Palace is often mistakenly referred to as a prison to where prisoners were brought from the prison on Pankrác. Here they were kept either in former vaults converted into cells or in a room nicknamed the "biograph". In the cinema, simple wooden benches were placed in rows of two behind each other within which three prisoners sat in each row.

Standing in front today

ϟϟ guards and Gestapo officers patrolled and walked through the rooms and observed the prisoners to see if they were sitting up straight and with their hands on their knees as ordered. They were often equipped with a baton or carabao. The room was nicknamed the biographer because of the placement of the prisoners in rows behind each other against a white wall that resembled a cinema screen, on which the prisoners mentally projected their stories during the long waits for interrogation. 

Today it's used by the Ministry of Industry and Trade although since the 1990s, the memorial in the basement has housed a reconstruction of the Gestapo torture chamber transferred from another room. The visit is only possible by appointment. The memorial is run by a communist veterans' organisation that is controversial in the Czech Republic given that immediately after the Gestapo left Prague, the Czechoslovak secret police StB moved into the Petschek Palace. From the beginning, the StB was a communist entity that carried out criminal acts in favour of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, such as the summary execution of alleged or actual collaborators, surveillance and wiretapping of leading members of other parties, or the creation of false evidence to induce opponents of the Denigrate or destroy the Communist Party. The head of the Political Intelligence Section was initially Štěpán Plaček, who used the most brutal interrogation methods in the Petschek Palace and ordered numerous liquidations. From January 1, 1948, the building was officially the headquarters of the intelligence service of the Ministry of the Interior for which the same methods were used as by the Gestapo: torture, threats, food and sleep deprivation, drugs, which were used primarily in the preparation of court proceedings against political opponents of communism or against unreliable citizens. Cases of death or lifelong maiming of the interrogated were tolerated or even considered directly desirable. This part of the building's history is still not mentioned by communist veterans in the Czech Republic. 

 

A plaque attached on the outer wall commemorates the Gestapo victims who were murdered in this building whilst inside implements of torture are kept on display.

Hradcany Castle

Standing where Hitler set up German headquarters and, inset,  Konstantin von Neurath being sworn in as Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia (although his authority was only nominal after September 1941) with Colonel General Manfred von Brauchitsch to the right.

At 14.03 Hitler’s train reached the little Bohemian frontier station of Leipa, where Panzer Corps Commander General Erich Hoepner awaited him with Colonel Erwin Rommel (who was to command the ‘Führer HQ’). To the consternation of Himmler and the security staff, Hitler decided to drive right on to Prague. At 16.00 the frontier barrier was raised for him to cross into Czecho-Slovakia, and in a snowstorm his convoy headed on to the capital. He stood in his open car, saluting as he passed his regiments. It was dusk when he arrived in Prague. At first nobody knew where Hácha’s official residence, the Hradcany Castle, was. Hitler’s drivers finally entered it through a gate in the rear. A palace flunky was found to guide them to a wing where these unexpected visitors might sleep, but Hitler did not rest yet. He began dictating a law establishing a German ‘Protectorate’ over Bohemia and Moravia. At two in the morning a cold buffet arrived, provided by the local German Centre. There was Pilsen beer: Hitler was prevailed upon to sample a small glass but he grimaced, did not finish it, and went to bed. The first that the citizens of Prague knew of his presence in their midst was next morning, when they espied his personal swastika standard beating from a flagpole atop the snow-bedecked palace roofs.

 Irving's Hitler's War and The War Path, 162

Hitler addressing a crowd from a second-floor window from the castle which today serves as the official residence/office of the president of the Czech Republic. When he arrived at Hradcany Castle on the evening of March 15, 1939, he found the building essentially empty. He had entered the castle in gathering darkness after a drive through a blizzard. His entourage noted that the "castle flunkies" hadn't expected them, forcing his adjutants to sleep on the floor; he later told Joseph Goebbels over supper how he had found the castle "quite deserted" upon his arrival. Irving writes that when Hitler found himself within a "barely furnished room" he embraced Heinrich Himmler and exclaimed, "isn’t it wonderful that we are standing here, here we are and we shall never leave". He also allegedly remarked to Himmler that the manner in which he had secured the territory was "very elegantly done".

Hitler's invasion took place after having repeatedly pledging himself and his movement to respect the right to self-determination of other ethnic groups:

   We will never attempt to subjugate foreign peoples. speech of May 27, 1933. 
   We have no territorial claims to make in Europe. speech of March 7, 1936 
   The German Reich Government shall thus unconditionally abide by the other articles governing the coexistence of the nations, including territorial provisions, and put into effect solely by means of peaceful understanding those amendments which become inevitable by virtue of the changing times. speech of May 21, 1935. 
   It is the last territorial demand I shall make in Europe... I repeat here before you, once this issue has been resolved; there will no longer be any further territorial problems for Germany in Europe! speech of September 26, 1938. 
   We do not want any Czechs at all. ibid.

Heydrich taking up his position as 'protector' of Bohemia and Moravia. Earlier on September 27, 1941, the Czech Press Agency reported that his predecessor von Neurath “had fallen ill” and named Heydrich as his “substitute Reich Protector”. By then Hitler had become convinced that Neurath’s “good and peaceable nature now seemed more like weakness and stupidity”. Goebbels noted that the Protectorate required a “strong hand to maintain order” and that Neurath belonged to “an entirely different world” than the committed Nazis. In his inaugural speech at Černín Palace on October 2, 1941, Heydrich outlined his "unflinching hardness" and his racial vision for the region. In terms of the Czechs' allegiance to the Reich, he warned that “I must unambiguously and with unflinching hardness bring the citizens of this country, Czech or otherwise, to the understanding that there is no avoiding the fact they are members of the Reich and as such they owe allegiance to the Reich”. In regards to the war effort, he "must have peace of mind that every Czech worker works at his maximum for the German war effort… This includes feeding the Czech worker- to put it frankly- so that he can do his work”. He declared that the territory “must once and for all be settled by Germans” and demanded a “racial inventory” to determine who was “suited to be Germanised", reportedly telling his subordinates that for those who could not be assimilated or used “I’ll put them against the wall”. 

 

The Protectorate government was required to attend Heydrich's funeral. Remarkably, David Irving actually claims that Heydrich had been genuinely mourned by the Czech population:

Surprisingly, the ‘protectorate’ brought blessings for the Czechs as well. Their economy was stabilised and unemployment vanished. Their menfolk were not called upon to bear arms in Hitler’s coalition. Their armed forces were dissolved, and their officers were given state pensions on Hitler’s orders, to purchase their dependence and complicity. The industrious Czechs accepted rich contracts from the Reich and learned eventually to cherish the pax teutonica enforced by Reinhard Heydrich in 1941. It was the peace of the graveyard, but Heydrich won the affection of the Czech workers to such an extent – for instance, by introducing the first ever Bismarckian social security and pension schemes – that 30,000 Czechs thronged into Wenceslas Square in Prague to demonstrate against his murder in 1942. The Czechs had not been required to sell their souls, and this was what Hitler had promised Hácha in Berlin. Hácha himself never felt any grievance. He inquired of Morell about the prescription he had been injected with and thereafter obtained a regular supply from Morell’s pharmacy. He would die, forgotten, in an Allied prison in 1945; Tiso and Tuka were both hanged.

   (163) Hitler's War

This passage is characteristic of Irving's method as Richard J. Evans testified during the libel trial Irving v. Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt, concluded on April 11, 2000, in which Evans demonstrated that Irving systematically distorted and manipulated documentary evidence to support a predetermined narrative of Hitler as a rational and moderate statesman.  Here Irving's framing that the Protectorate "brought blessings" and that Hitler "had not required the Czechs to sell their souls," isn't supported by record of deportations, executions, forced labour, and the total destruction of Czechoslovak sovereignty. His account of the post-Heydrich demonstration ignores the context of organised compulsion and subsequent mass reprisals that makes any reading of popular sentiment from that gathering unreliable. To say that Hácha “never felt any grievance” is hard to reconcile with the known circumstances of March 1939, when he was placed under intense pressure in Berlin before accepting the German takeover during which he had suffered a cardiac arrest. He may have remained head of the Protectorate state, but his personal position cannot be reduced to contentment. There is also a straightforward factual error in Irving’s final sentence: Hácha may not have died in an “Allied prison,” but he did on June 27, 1945 in Pankrác prison in Prague, in Czechoslovak custody.  

The site of Heydrich's assassination at V Holesovickach at the junction with Zenklova then and now. On May 27, 1942, at 10.30, Obergruppenführer-ϟϟ Reinhard Heydrich proceeded on his daily drive from his home in Paneneske Brezany to Prague Castle. Warrant Officer Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš waited at the tram stop on the curve near Bulovka Hospital. Valčik was positioned about 100 metres north of Gabčík and Kubiš as lookout for the approaching car. As Heydrich’s open-topped Mercedes-Benz approached, Gabčík stepped in front of the vehicle, trying to open fire, but his Sten gun jammed. Heydrich ordered his driver, ϟϟ-Oberscharfuehrer Klein, to stop the car. When Heydrich stood up to try to shoot Gabčík, Kubiš threw a grenade at the vehicle, and its fragments ripped through the car’s right-rear fender, embedding shrapnel and fibres from the upholstery into Heydrich’s body. Kubiš was also injured by the shrapnel. Heydrich, apparently unaware of his shrapnel injuries, got out of the car, returned fire and tried to chase Gabčík but soon collapsed. Klein returned from his abortive attempt to chase Kubiš, and Heydrich ordered him to chase Gabčík. Klein was shot twice by Gabčík (now using his revolver) and wounded in the pursuit.

Heydrich was taken here to Bulovka Hospital where, 

upon arrival, Heydrich was in critical condition with a broken rib, a ruptured diaphragm, and shrapnel or other external objects lodged in his spleen. He initially refused to allow the local German doctor to operate, demanding instead that a surgeon be sent from Berlin to perform the procedure. By noon on the day of the attack, a compromise was reached regarding his medical team, and Heydrich was finally taken into the operating room

where his wounds were cleaned by a young Czech doctor, Vladimir Snajdr. He was conscious and had regained his icy self-control. As Snajdr later recalled: ‘I took forceps and a few swabs and tried to see whether the wound was deep. . . he did not flinch although it must have hurt him.’ The German Director of the hospital, one Doctor Dick, was summoned to the scene and made a more detailed examination. The prognosis seemed good. The shrapnel had missed the spine and kidneys and appeared to have inflicted only flesh wounds. He insisted, however, on an X-ray. This revealed a more serious situation. Heydrich had a broken rib, a ruptured diaphragm and splinters from either the bomb or the car in his spleen. They were injuries which could have been avoided by the installation of armour plate in the seat backs of the Mercedes. Dick recommended an immediate operation. Heydrich did not want to entrust his life to a provincial German doctor and demanded a surgeon from Berlin. After some argument, a compromise was reached. Heydrich agreed to surgery but only if the top Nazi consultant in Prague, Professor Hollbaum of the German Clinic, was called in. Shortly after midday, he was wheeled into the operating theatre.

Callum MacDonald  (208) The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich

After a week when his condition appeared to be improving, he collapsed whilst eating lunch and went into shock, dying the next morning. His physicians concluded that he had died from infection of his wounds. Here Heydrich's coffin is shown in Bulovka hospital, attended by an ϟϟ honour guard. A scanned copy of Reinhard Heydrich - Ein Leben der Tat (Walter Wannenmacher, 1944) can be downloaded.

On the right is the stamp issued on the first anniversary of Heydrich's death, June 4, 1943 on the commission of Karl Hermann Frank. The design is taken from the death mask of Heydrich created by Berlin Professor Franz Rotter, a Sudeten German artist 

summoned to the Bulovka Hospital to create this death mask and whose work became a central piece of the "Heydrich cult" and Nazi propaganda in the Protectorate. 

In accordance with SS ritual, a death mask was made. A police official named Wehner, who had been summoned to Prague to investigate the circumstances of Heydrich’s murder, said that the mask showed “deceptive features of uncanny spirituality and entirely perverted beauty, like a cardinal of the Renaissance.” 

Graaber (220) The Life and Times of Reinhard Heydrich

Republic Square then and now

During the savage repression unleashed by the Nazis immediately after the assassination, the paratroopers – thanks to the representatives of the Orthodox Church – found safe refuge in the Church of Ss. Cyril and Methodius (during the Occupation it was known as St. Charles Borromeo) in Resslova Street in Prague. Originally, the group was supposed to hide here only for a short time, the paratroopers were arranged with Vojtěch Paur, who worked in the funeral service, to come to the church for them and take them outside the city. However, this could no longer be realised. One of the paratroopers stopped cooperating with his comrades and became a confidant of the Gestapo; Karel Čurda revealed to the Nazis the collaborators of the paratroopers, through whom the Gestapo learned about the hiding place before the group could escape.

Protectorate authorities promised, along with clemency, an increased award sum for anyone who knew of the assassins’ location, and they announced drastic measures if the assassins were not handed over by June 18. As the date approached, the tensions came to a crescendo. Rumours spread that the Nazis would execute every tenth Czech. Many Czechs gave serious thought to suicide.'' Two days before the deadline a Czechoslovak parachutist, Karel Curda, walked into Gestapo headquarters in Prague. He claimed to fear for his family and to have become disenchanted with the exile government. He did not know Gabčik and Kubis’s location, but he did betray those who had provided the safe houses. A wave of arrests followed. After withstanding hours of brutal interrogation, one of the men slipped that the assassins were hiding in an Orthodox church in Prague along with nine other parachutists. 

Bryant (171) Prague in Black

 On June 18, 1942, at 4.15 in the morning, the cathedral was surrounded by approximately 760 members of the Waffen-ϟϟ combat units, namely the Ersatz-Bataillon ϟϟ "Deutschland" and the ϟϟ-Wachbataillon Prag. Several dozen members of the Gestapo and the local fire brigade were also present at the intervention. The whole area was sealed off. The Orthodox Bishop of Gorazd tried to end the Nazi terror that followed by his own self-sacrifice. He wrote several letters to the Prime Minister of the Protectorate, the Minister of Education, and also to the office of the Reich Protector, in which he took all responsibility for the sheltering of the paratroopers upon himself. He was ready to undergo any punishment, including death, but the then-declared martial law didn't spare anyone. He was shot at the Kobylis shooting range on September 4, 1942. The Czech Orthodox Church was banned on September 1, 1942.

The church surrounded by German soldiers in 1942 and me standing in front today. On the right is the inner sanctum where Adolf Opálka, Josef Bublík and Jan Kubiš were keeping guard in the gallery and the choir. At 4.10 the Germans began to surround the church, the complete closure occurred more than ten minutes later than planned. The first sortie started at 4.15. First, the first assault squad, consisting of about fifteen Gestapo officials and 

ϟϟ men, searched the churchman's apartment, from where they then broke into the church itself. Opálka, Kubiš and Bublík were patrolling here, and they soon opened fire. The defenders only had pistols at their disposal rather than the Sten, often depicted in dramatisations, with limited ammo and perhaps some grenades. Among other things, the Anthropoid landing party was equipped with four Mills hand grenades, which have never been found and it cannot be ruled out that they were used in the defence of the church. The attackers used machine guns and grenades. The Nazis didn't succeed in their first attack, they had two slightly wounded and were unable to penetrate the emporium. Shortly afterwards, the Germans started shooting into the church from the windows of the surrounding buildings, but this fire was stopped very soon, because they were mainly threatening their own people. A protracted firefight followed, when the paratroopers defended themselves against massive fire and grenade throwing by the Germans with sporadic shots. Due to the limited space, the attackers couldn't fully use their numerical superiority, and the units they sent against the paratroopers numbered a maximum of 20 members. The resistance of the paratroopers was broken only after two hours, when they ran out of ammunition. Opálka and Bublík kept the last bullet for themselves. Jan Kubiš bled to death as a result of numerous injuries. There was an attempt to save two of the paratroopers in the hospital (the Gestapo wanted to capture the paratroopers alive if possible), but their injuries were incompatible with life. Overall, it is possible to evaluate the German intervention as well executed, as it achieved a result with minimal losses. The defence of the paratroopers was tenacious, but due to the number of attackers and their weapons, they could not have had any chance of success.

The remaining paratroopers remained hidden in the crypt of the church. It was quite extensive and fragmented. To enter the crypt, paratroopers used a small opening with a door, to which a ladder was attached. But the Germans initially had no idea that there were more paratroopers in the church. The discovery of a fourth suit at the emporium, which apparently did not belong to any of the dead trio, led them to the trail. This was followed by pressure on chaplain Vladimír Petřek and parish priest Alois Václav Čiklo, who then revealed the existence of the crypt. The attackers then discovered a small opening covered by a board. This is where they tried to penetrate underground, but were repulsed at the cost of two wounded, one shot through the thigh the other in the eye. Attempts at negotiation followed, with the Nazis forcing captured clergy to persuade the paratroopers to surrender to no avail. The Germans also brought Čurda to the church, who allegedly called to the crypt: "Comrades, surrender! Nothing will happen to you! Nothing happened to me either." The paratroopers responded with fire and answered other challenges: "We are Czechs! We never give up, you hear? Never!” It is said that in the meantime they tried to break an escape route into the sewers, but this opening in the wall was probably made later.  

I took the photo on the left of the ventilation window as seen from inside the crypt. It was through this small ventilation window from the street in the western part of the church that the Germans threw tear gas grenades into the crypt, but the paratroopers threw them out and even added improvised Molotov cocktails.

This was followed by German fire into the window, which was soon stopped. After that, the Germans tried to wash away the paratroopers with the help of protectorate firefighters. However, the defenders pushed the hoses back into the street using a wooden ladder and fired at the soldiers. Finally, one of the firefighters pulled out a ladder for them. Now there was nothing to prevent the flooding of the crypt. However, the water rose much more slowly than the Germans imagined and the flooding was eventually stopped. The decisive event was being prepared inside the church. The firemen, on the orders of the Germans, used demolition tools to break the slab covering the original entrance to the crypt with stairs. Even before the Germans made a charge through this newly created opening, several shots rang out from the crypt. The fight in the crypt ended like the fight at the top of the church: the paratroopers kept the last charge for themselves. All four parachutists, Valčík, Švarc, Hrubý and Gabčík, were pulled out in front of the church for identification.  Because the Gestapo triumphantly immediately dragged the dead paratroopers in front of the church, it is not known in which places in the crypt Gabčík, Valčík, Hrubý and Švarc died. New research, however, analysed the blood traces found and compares DNA with living relatives to find out who died in the tomb near the stairs the Nazis used to enter the crypt. Josef Valčík is already excluded. 

The paratroopers all paid with their lives, but only Jan Kubiš was proven to have died as a result of injuries caused by ϟϟ and Gestapo assault units. The other six took their own lives. Some of them even attempted double suicide by biting off an ampoule of poison and then shooting themselves. The Germans had three wounded (shot through the arm, thigh, injured eye) and one concussed after being hit in the helmet.

German soldiers and fire brigade members try and flood the crypt and standing at the same spot today compared to the time, with a memorial to the heroes above. As can be seen, the bullet holes remain. Heinz Pannwitz was the Gestapo official who led the special commission (the Sonderkommission) tasked with investigating the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. He personally directed the attempt to force the paratroopers out of the crypt by summoning the Prague fire brigade and ordering them to flood the space with water at a rate of 660 gallons per minute. When flooding failed to immediately secure a surrender, he ordered the Waffen 

ϟϟ to throw tear-gas grenades down the ventilation shaft hoping to persuade the parachutists to surrender so they could be captured and interrogated, rather than killing them outright in the battle. He faced "interference" during the operation from his "political master," Karl Hermann Frank, who arrived at the church shortly after dawn and took a more aggressive stance toward the defenders. Whilst the fire brigade attempted to flood the crypt from the outside, attackers inside the church found the main entrance to the crypt hidden near the altar under a carpet. This entrance was covered by a stone slab, which the Germans eventually destroyed with explosives to gain access via the steep stairs leading underground.

Pannwitz summoned the Prague fire brigade and ordered them to flood the crypt. A fireman climbed up a ladder and knocked out the iron grille over the vent. The hoses were connected and began to pump 660 gallons of water a minute into the catacombs. Trapped inside, the parachutists placed a short ladder against the wall and, ducking under the powerful jets of water roaring through the opening, cut the hoses or pushed them out. When the Czech firemen tried to replace them they were repulsed by gunfire and Molotov cocktails.According to the German report of the action: ‘The Waffen SS was then ordered to throw tear-gas grenades down the shaft. .. However, the criminals quite often managed to throw them back out. Hoses were again put into the shaft; a few hand grenades were used to stop the criminals pushing the hoses out again.’ Pannwitz hoped that the flooding and the gas would eventually persuade the parachutists to surrender. He reckoned without their grim determination and the interference of his political master, Karl Hermann Frank, who arrived on the scene shortly after dawn. 

Callum MacDonald  (234) The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich

The attackers tried to reach the choir through a narrow staircase, defended by the gunfire of Adolf Opálka. There is a museum inside the church dedicated to them as national heroes.

The dead laid out for identification by Karel Čurda, a former member of the Out Distance unit who had betrayed the names of the team’s local contact persons for the bounty of 1 million Reichsmarks. I'm standing on the site today.

The combination of terror generated by the massacre of entire families and the annihilation of Lidice, and the promise of pardons and huge financial rewards, eventually bore results. The paratrooper Karel Čurda from the OUT DISTANCE unit, who left Prague immediately after the assassination and hid out with his mother in Nová Hlína near Třeboň, finally gave in to his own fear and the reproaches of those closest to him. He betrayed. First, on June 13, 1942, he wrote a traitorous letter in which he identified Gabčík and Kubiš as the assassins. When the expected reaction did not materialize, he personally set out for Prague on 16 June 1942, and, shortly before noon, reported to the Gestapo administrative headquarters in Petschek Palace. There he caused a sensation with his all-encompassing testimony, because up to that point, all of the Nazis’ efforts to find the assassins had proved fruitless. Čurda betrayed to the Gestapo everyone he knew personally who had assisted the paratroopers, not only in Prague but in Pardubice, Lázně Bělohrad and Pilsen. Through his betrayal he caused the deaths of dozens of patriots and their families. 

Burian, Knížek, Rajlich, Stehlík (76) Assassination

Kubis and Gabcik, and their severed heads presented to their relatives. The heads of Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis were preserved whole, while the flesh of the other five heads was removed and the heads made into skulls. None knows the final fate of the heads, although it is likely that the Nazis cremated them in Strasnice crematorium shortly before the War ended. The director of Strasnice crematorium described how one day several ϟϟ men arrived with several barrels full of human heads and tossed them into the furnace like footballs. He also mentioned that one of the heads looked very much like that of bishop Gorazd who was executed after Heydrich's assassination. More than 1350 people were executed in the aftermath of the assassination, and hundreds died during interrogation. The villages of Lidice and Lezaky were levelled after all male inhabitants were shot and women and children deported.

Between 1937 and 1938 First Lieutenant Adolf Opálka studied at the Military Academy in Hranice and graduated with the rank of Lt. of Infantry. In July 1939 he left for France through Poland, served in the Foreign Legion in Sidi bel Abbes ́and later in Oran. He enlisted in Agde in September 1939. He progressively went through all the regiments of the 1st Czechoslovak Division. He participated in battles on the French front. Upon arrival in Britain he served in a machine gun company. He volunteered for missions behind enemy lines. He was sent to the occupied homeland as a commander of OUT DISTANCE. He established contact with Capt. A. Bartoš, whereupon he was sent to Prague to become the Commander of the “Prague Paratroopers”. He participated in preparations of Heydrich’s assassination. He died in the Church on Resslova Street when, finding himself in a hopeless situation with a shattered-bone fracture in his right arm, he took poison and simultaneously ended his life with a pistol shot to the left temple.

Sergeant Cadet Josef Bublík (left), wounded by many fragments, ended his life with a bullet from his own pistol. Staff Sergeant Jaroslav Švarc (right) took poison and simultaneously ended his life with a shot from his pistol.

Sergeant Jan Hrubý (left) ended his life with a shot from his 9 mm Browning pistol whilst Second Lieutenant Josef Valcík (right) ended his life with a pistol shot.

One can enter the crypt where the last moments of the siege took place. The tombs intended for coffins became the last refuge of the paratroopers. In the hopeless situation they all chose a heroic death. The two photos on the right I took show busts of the seven martyrs, and the hole they tried to dig to escape.

Across from the church/museum is the Restaurant Krčma u Parašutistů- Tavern of the Parachutists- that doubles as a shrine to the paratroopers. The restaurant's interior is designed as a themed tribute to the paratroopers and the broader Czechoslovak resistance during the war. Established during the post-Communist period, the venue occupies a vaulted cellar space that evokes the clandestine atmosphere of the wartime resistance, though the building itself dates to the nineteenth century and was not an actual historical site of the assassination plot. The walls are decorated with period photographs of the paratroopers, including individual portraits of Gabčík and Kubiš alongside group photographs of the various teams trained in Britain and deployed into the Protectorate. Reproductions of wartime documents are displayed, including identity papers, resistance pamphlets, and operational orders. The decor includes military equipment and memorabilia from the period, such as replica weapons, parachute harnesses, ammunition boxes, helmets, and uniforms representative of those worn by the Czechoslovak soldiers who trained with the British Special Operations Executive at various locations in England and Scotland, including Arisaig House in the Scottish Highlands and Cholmondeley Park in Cheshire. 

Maps showing the locations of parachute drops into the Protectorate are displayed on the walls which later influenced my own classrooom decor, illustrating the various operations that were carried out alongside Anthropoid, including Operation Silver A, Operation Silver B, Operation Out Distance, Operation Bioscope, Operation Tin, and Operation Zinc. Framed newspaper clippings from both the Czech underground press and the official Protectorate press cover the aftermath of the assassination and the subsequent Nazi reprisals.
The restaurant's thematic focus extends to the reprisals that followed Heydrich's death, which are documented through photographs and text displayed on the walls. The destruction of Lidice on June 10, 1942, is referenced, when ϟϟ and Ordnungspolizei units surrounded the village, shot all 173 men over the age of fifteen, deported the women to Ravensbrück concentration camp, and sent the children to various locations, with many subsequently gassed at the Chełmno extermination camp. The village was then razed to the ground and its name removed from official maps. The parallel destruction of Ležáky on June 24, 1942, is also documented, where all thirty-three adult inhabitants were executed at Pardubice and the village was similarly destroyed. These reprisals resulted in the deaths of approximately five thousand Czech citizens in the weeks following the assassination. The restaurant's decor presents these events through documentary photographs, maps, and explanatory texts in Czech and English, allowing visitors to engage with the historical narrative whilst dining.

First time I've had a pint under the saluting images of top ϟϟ officials and Nazi posters

After the assassination the parachutists were looked after by families. Here plaques can be seen honouring the Moravec family on Biskupcova 7 and Jan Zelinky on Biskupcova 4. The apartment of the Moravec family was the paratroopers’ main Prague sanctuary. It was located at 1795/7 Biskupcova Street (Biskupec Strasse). Marie Moravcová was able to obtain aid for the paratroopers through former colleagues from the Volunteer Sisters of the Czech Red Cross. Her son Vlastimil acted as a messenger for the paratroopers and was actively involved in setting up of the assassination. Her second son, Miroslav, fought as a pilot of the No 310 (Czechoslovak) Fighter Squadron in Britain; he died on June 7, 1944 in a plane crash. Marie Moravcová committed suicide during her arrest by the Gestapo on June 17, 1942. Vlastimil Moravec and his father Alois were executed in Mauthausen on October 24, 1942.

Jan Zelenka-Hajský was one of the leading supporters of the paratroopers. This teacher, a former station leader of the Krušnohorská Sokol Group and a member of the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service, unreservedly supported plans to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich. Along with his son, Jan Milíce, and his wife, Františka, he helped the paratroopers in every way possible, and supplied them with accommodation in his apartment at 1837/4 Biskupec Street(across from Moravec’s apartment). Jan Zelenka and his son, Jan Milíce, committed suicide on June 17, 1942. Františka Zelenková was executed in Mauthausen on October 24, 1942.
Hitler ordered the ϟϟ and Gestapo to “wade in blood” throughout Bohemia to find Heydrich’s killers. More than 13,000 people were ultimately arrested. The most notorious incident was in the village of Lidice, which was destroyed on June 9, 1942: 199 male residents were executed, 95 children taken, eight of whom were taken for adoption by German families, and 195 women arrested.

Nerudova ulice then and now. Ascending from Charles Bridge towards Prague Castle in Malá Strana, the street's strategic location made it attractive for housing high-ranking officials and ϟϟ and SD personnel. Several properties, including No. 4 (formerly owned by the Jewish Kohn family) and buildings around Nos. 18–20, were Aryanised in 1940–1942 and reassigned to German officers. After Heydrich’s arrival in 1941, security presence intensified, with increased patrols and requisitions to support the administration at Prague Castle. By mid-1942, a substantial portion of Jewish-owned real estate in the district had been seized. During the Prague Uprising in May 1945, the street saw skirmishes as insurgents contested routes to the Castle. Postwar restitution processes in the late 1940s addressed many of these seizures, though some properties remained in state hands or were subject to prolonged legal disputes as was the case with Celetná ulice on the right, one of the oldest thoroughfares in Staré Město running from Old Town Square toward the Powder Tower, was deeply affected by the German occupation through both administrative control and economic dispossession. 
Commercial and residential properties, such as No. 3 (formerly belonging to Jewish merchant Leopold Pick) and No. 15, were Aryanised starting in 1940, with owners evicted and assets transferred to German entities or Wehrmacht personnel. The street formed part of the historic core used for propaganda displays and parades. In the broader Old Town, over 450 Jewish properties were seized by the end of 1941. Resistance activity occurred in the dense urban fabric around Celetná, though specific safe houses are less documented. Fierce street fighting took place here during the May 1945 Prague Uprising. Postwar, many buildings underwent restitution, though nationalisation under the communist regime complicated returns.

Prague Military Museum (Armadni Muzeum)

 

At the National Liberation Memorial atop Vítkov Hill in Prague's Žižkov district, seen as one of the most important buildings related to the development of Czechoslovak/Czech statehood. I'm standing in front of the third largest bronze rider statue in the world, that of Jan Žižka, who defeated Catholic forces led by King Sigismund in 1420 in the Battle of Vítkov Hill. The Monument also includes the Ceremonial Hall, an exhibition entitled Crossroads of Czech and Czechoslovak Statehood, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and other exhibition halls. The Monument was built from 1928 to 1938 in honour of the Great War Czechoslovak legionaries and later extended after the war to commemorate the anti-Nazi resistance.

After the Germans annexed the country, the lower buildings of the museum, now the Institute of Military History, were seized although the Monument's building escaped the Wehrmacht's attention until November 1942. The administration of the Monument took advantage of this period to secretly remove everything valuable, such as metals for casting sculptures, and works of art. From November 1942 the Monument was occupied by the German administration and until the end of the war the Wehrmacht used it for storage. At the beginning of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939, the Tomb became a place where people expressed their symbolic resistance against Nazi rule and thus was demolished by the Nazis in 1941. After the war, consideration was given to renewing the tomb and moving it to Vítkov.

 

After 1948, it was used to promote national ideology and the Communist regime. I'm here at the entrance beside a T-34 tank. As part of the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Zborov, the Headquarters of the Czechoslovak Army decided to establish the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the National Monument in Vítkov, which would contain the remains from Zborov, but Soviet embassy officials denied the transfer of those remains. In June 1949 restoration work was underway in the military graveyard near Dukla, and during exhumation work on July 14, 1949 the remains of one of the unknown soldiers were unearthed in the graveyard in Vyšný Komárnik, transported to Prague and temporarily lodged within the National Museum. On October 9, 1949, when celebrations for the fifth anniversary of the Battle of the Dukla Pass were at their peak, the remains were moved to the Liberation Monument.

Between 1954 and 1962 it housed the mausoleum of Klement Gottwald. In 2000, the monument was acquired by the National Museum, which conducted a major restoration work. After over two years of reconstruction, the Memorial was opened to the public on October 29, 2009. It was built between 1928-1938 in honour of the Czechoslovakian legionaries.

The museum displays one of the four original typed copies of the Munich Agreement signed on the night of 29-30 September 1938. This specific copy is the one retained by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and later transferred to the Czechoslovak state archives. It consists of multiple typed pages on heavy paper with handwritten signatures of Neville Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, and Mussolini, along with official seals. The document isn't the German master copy but one of the parallel versions produced during the chaotic late-night negotiations at the Führerbau in Munich.  After the war, the copy was returned to Czechoslovakia as part of the restitution of diplomatic documents. It was initially held in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives before being transferred to the Military Historical Institute in the 1950s-60s for exhibition purposes. The agreement is kept within a climate-controlled case alongside related items such as telegrammes from the Beneš government protesting their exclusion, contemporary Czech newspapers with headlines like “Munich Betrayal,” and photographs of the mobilisation that was ultimately cancelled. Conservators note that the paper shows typical aging for documents of that era, with slight discolouration but good overall preservation. The museum uses it to illustrate not only the agreement itself but the subsequent dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and the road to full occupation in March 1939. 

The Mercedes-Benz 320 Cabriolet (chassis number 112 368, originally registered SS-3) in which Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated on May 27, 1942. After the attack in Libeň, the car was immediately impounded by the Gestapo and subjected to detailed forensic examination. It sustained multiple bullet impacts from Gabčík’s Sten gun and shrapnel damage from Kubiš’s grenade, particularly on the driver’s side and rear passenger compartment. After the war it was recovered by Czechoslovak authorities from a German storage facility and initially held by the Ministry of National Defence before being transferred to the Military Historical Institute in the early 1950s. 

Conservation has been minimal and respectful; the vehicle was stabilised against further rust, with original paint layers and upholstery largely left intact. Visible bullet holes and grenade damage were preserved rather than repaired, making it one of the most authentic “crime scene” vehicles from the Nazi era on public display anywhere. Currently the car is presented in a large, dimly lit hall dedicated to the Czech resistance where it's raised on a low platform with dramatic lighting highlighting the damage. Accompanying artifacts include the original bicycles used by the assassins, fragments of the grenade, and period photographs of the ambush site. Informational panels explain the vehicle’s provenance, its technical specifications, and the forensic findings. The exhibit deliberately avoids sensationalism, framing the car as silent witness to both resistance courage and the subsequent Nazi terror. 

 

The mausoleum of Klement Gottwald, longtime leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia from and later President, was established here in 1953. Gottwald had suffered from heart disease for several years. Shortly after attending Stalin's funeral on March 9, 1953, one of his arteries burst and he died five days. The original layout placed a sarcophagus in the Main Hall, as the place where founder Tomas Masaryk was to be buried. He eventually rejected the plan, and so did his family after his death. From 1953 to 1962 this area was rebuilt into the Klement Gottwald Mausoleum. The Minister of National Defence and Gottwald's son-in-law Alexej Čepička was in charge of preparatory works for the conversion. The examples came from Lenin's Mausoleum in Moscow and the Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum in Sofia. Gottwald's body was exhibited in the centre of the mausoleum in a glazed sarcophagus. The lid had built-in lights with small mirrors. The body was moved in and out of the underground laboratory by a vibration-free telescopic device. The embalmed body was dressed in the blue general's uniform of the Head Commander of Czechoslovak armies. In 1958 it was changed to civilian attire. However, by 1962 the personality cult ended and it was no longer possible to show Gottwald's body. There are accounts that in 1962 Gottwald's body had blackened and was decomposing due to a botched embalming. His body was cremated, the ashes returned to the Žižka Monument and placed in a sarcophagus. After 1989, all of the remains buried here were taken away; his nondescript grave can be seen below in a common grave at Prague's Olšany Cemetery, together with the ashes of about 20 other communist leaders which had also originally been placed in the Žižka Monument. The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia now maintains that common grave.

Jewish Ghetto

Standing in front of the Maisel Synagogue where Hitler has been said to have intended to establish his "Central Museum of the Extinguished Jewish Race." The synagogue in Prague's former Jewish ghetto served as one of the important religious buildings during the Nazi era. It was constructed in 1590 under the patronage of Mordecai Maisel, the financier and philanthropist who served as Prefect of the Prague Jewish Town, and later rebuilt in neo-Gothic style between 1893 and 1894 to designs by Max Fleischer. Under Nazi rule the synagogue was confiscated from the Jewish community and repurposed as a storage facility for confiscated Jewish property. Ritual objects, furniture, and household goods taken from Jewish households during the deportations were warehoused within its walls. The synagogue's function during the occupation was entirely administrative, serving as one of several depots in the Jewish Quarter where the possessions of deported Jews were sorted and catalogued before being distributed or transported elsewhere. 

Two days after the establishment of the Protectorate the Czech government began drafting measures for the expropriation of Jewish property and, to the dismay of local Oberlandrate, began assigning Treuhdnder (literally, “trustees”) to Jewish firms.’ In June Neurath’s office issued a decree that claimed for the Reich Protector’ Office the sole authority to issue decrees relating to Aryanization. Bertsch’s office was responsible for the implementation of most of these measures. Neurath repeated Goring’s declaration that no Jewish property could be sold, transferred, or given away without permission. All valuables, such as gold and pearls, had to be registered with special offices created by the Reich Protectors Office. Only the Reich protector had the right to assign Treuhander, a responsibility that in practice fell to the Oberlandrate.” In 1940 Neurath’s office accelerated the process. Decrees that year required Jews to sell their valuables to a special public purchasing agency and to deposit stocks and other paper assets in a foreign currency bank. A second cascade of decrees declared a whole range of business ventures—film production, textile and shoe manufacturing, and then pubs, insurance companies, and banks—off limits to Jewish owners.’ Germans, with the help of “Aryanization loans” from German banks and subsidies from the German Reich, could purchase these businesses. More often, however, the regime simply liquidated the Jewish firms.  
After Prague's liberation, the building remained in a state of disrepair for years. It was incorporated into the Jewish Museum in Prague's network of exhibition spaces and underwent extensive restoration in the 1990s, reopening to the public with a permanent exhibition devoted to the history of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia from the eighteenth century to 1918.

Chad Bryant (82-83) Prague in Black 

At the Klausen Synagogue on the right, the largest in the ghetto and the seat of Prague's Burial Society, which continued to function as a central institution for the Jewish community under Nazi occupation. It was erected in 1694 in the early Baroque style on the site of an earlier structure destroyed by fire in 1689. It served for centuries as the principal seat of the Prague Burial Society, the Chevra Kadisha, whose members were responsible for the ritual washing and preparation of the dead, the supervision of burials in the Old Jewish Cemetery, and the provision of charitable support to bereaved families. During the Nazi occupation, the synagogue was likewise confiscated. Its function as the centre of the Burial Society's operations ceased entirely once the Jewish population of Prague began to be deported in 1941 and 1942. he commonly held view that the Nazis brought Jewish ritual objects from the whole of occupied Europe to Prague so that after their victory they could create a ‘museum of an extinct race’ in reality is more nuanced and has become a self-perpetuating legend in which it was set up by Adolf Eichmann or his department as the “Jewish Central Museum” during the German occupation and was opened by the ϟϟ on April 6, 1943 as the “Museum of a Lost Race”. In fact, the Jewish Museum in Prague wasn't created by the Nazis but was established August 1906. The museum’s collection programme was clearly based along regional lines, covering solely Jewish memorial objects from Prague and Bohemia. At the time of the Nazi occupation, the museum’s collection already contained approximately 760 items.The building was absorbed into the network of confiscated Jewish properties managed by the Nazi occupation authorities and used in connection with the administration of the Jewish Central Museum, the Jüdisches Zentralmuseum, which was reorganised in 1942 under the authority of Eichmann's Department IV B 4 of the Reich Security Main Office. The Klausen Synagogue served as one of the sites where confiscated Jewish artefacts were stored, sorted, and catalogued by Jewish prisoners from the Theresienstadt ghetto who were compelled to work under direct ϟϟ supervision. The building now houses a permanent exhibition on Jewish customs and traditions, part of the Jewish Museum in Prague's network of sites. 

The Old Jewish Cemetery, the oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe, is located on a small plot of land between the Pinkas Synagogue and the Klausen Synagogue. Because the cemetery was only capable of holding around 10% of the amount of Jews buried there, the graves spanned about twelve tombs deep. The most famous tomb belongs to Rabbi Loew, legendary creator of the Golem. Surprisingly, the cemetery and ghetto itself would not be intact today, if Hitler hadn't ordered it to be saved to serve as part of a museum after all the Jews were extinguished. To this day, the cemetery is almost the same as its mediæval dimensions, as there was no possibility of expansion in the ghetto. Due to the lack of space, the deceased were buried in up to twelve layers, which over the centuries resulted in an almost picturesque rise and fall in the ground over the centuries. The winding property, surrounded by a high wall, is located between the Pinkas and Klausen synagogues, but the Altneu and Maisel synagogues are also very close by. 

The Pinkas Synagogue in Josefstadt, dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust from Bohemia and Moravia. Part of the Jewish Museum, on its walls inside are the names of 80,000 Jews from Bohemia and Moravia who were murdered by the Nazis. Its wartime use was similar to that of the Maisel and Klausen synagogues, serving as a storage and administrative facility in connection with the confiscation and cataloguing of Jewish property. Jewish forced labourers were compelled to work in the synagogue sorting thousands of Torah scrolls and ritual items from liquidated communities across Bohemia and Moravia with the explicit goal of creating what the Nazis termed a museum of an extinguished Jewish race. In fact, the forced labour of Jewish curators in the Pinkas Synagogue contributed to the cataloguing of over one hundred thousand objects many of which were later used in the post-war Jewish Museum that now commemorates the victims. On April 6, 1943 the ϟϟ officially opened the museum complex that included the Pinkas Synagogue as a key exhibition and storage space. The synagogue's historic interior with its Renaissance elements provided additional capacity for the display of artefacts intended to demonstrate Nazi triumph over Jewish culture after the planned victory. The project reflected the Nazi combination of plunder and perverse documentation where objects were catalogued not for preservation but as trophies of genocide. The Pinkas Synagogue survived the occupation largely intact due to its utility in this cynical endeavour rather than being razed. The synagogue's role exemplified the Nazi policy of exploiting Jewish heritage for propaganda whilst pursuing the physical destruction of the community that created it.  
After the war, the synagogue was selected as the site for a memorial to the Czech and Moravian Jews murdered during the occupation. Between 1954 and 1959, the painters Václav Boštík and Jiří John inscribed the interior walls with the names of 77,297 victims, together with their dates of birth and dates of deportation. The inscriptions cover every available surface of the synagogue's interior. On the right is the exterior of the Pinkas Synagogue before reconstruction work began in the 1950s. In 1968, following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Communist authorities ordered the inscriptions painted over, a decision that has been attributed to the regime's desire to suppress public memory of the wartime period during a moment of political crisis. The inscriptions remained concealed until after 1989, when they were painstakingly restored. The synagogue now functions as a memorial and also houses on the first floor a permanent exhibition of drawings and paintings made by children interned at the Theresienstadt ghetto between 1942 and 1944, of whom the vast majority were subsequently deported to Auschwitz and murdered.   

Olšany Cemeteries

Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Prague is located within the Olšany Cemetery complex in the Žižkov district of Prague. The site contains the graves of 

264 Commonwealth servicemen who died during the Second World War, primarily airmen from the Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force who were killed during bombing operations over or near the territory of the Protectorate or who died as PoWs in German captivity on Czech soil. The majority of those buried in the Prague section served with Bomber Command and were killed during strategic bombing raids over central Europe. Aircraft returning from or en route to targets in eastern Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate itself were vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire and night fighter interception over Czech territory, and crews who were killed when their aircraft were shot down or crashed were initially buried in local churchyards and municipal cemeteries across Bohemia and Moravia before being concentrated into the Olšany site after the war. The cemetery also holds the graves of 39 airmen who died in the area during the period of November 1-3, 1944 whilst they were supplying weapons and material to the Warsaw Uprising.

At the entrance is the inscription: "The land on which this cemetery stands is the gift of the people of Czechoslovakia for the perpetual resting place of the sailors, soldiers, and airmen who are honoured here." The British had to trust the communist regime to establish this cemetery along their plans. 

The Czech connection to the Commonwealth during the Second World War extends well beyond the burials at Olšany. Following the German occupation of the Czech lands on March 15, 1939, thousands of Czechoslovak military personnel escaped abroad and eventually reached Britain, where they were reconstituted as Czechoslovak units within the British armed forces. Czechoslovak fighter pilots served with distinction during the Battle of Britain in the summer and autumn of 1940, with 310 Squadron and 312 Squadron operating as Czechoslovak fighter squadrons within RAF Fighter Command. Czechoslovak bomber crews also served with various Bomber Command squadrons. Some of the men buried at Olšany may have been members of these Czechoslovak units serving under RAF command, though the majority of the burials are of British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand airmen whose aircraft came down over Czech territory. The cemetery also contains a small number of graves from the First World War, reflecting the presence of Commonwealth PoWs who died in captivity in Austro-Hungarian territory during that conflict when Czech lands formed part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and housed PoW camps in which captured British and Imperial soldiers were held. The Commission's maintenance of these earlier graves alongside the Second World War burials ensures that the site serves as a continuous record of Commonwealth military losses on Czech soil across both world wars. The Olšany Cemetery itself dates from 1680, when it was established as a plague burial ground outside the city walls, and it has since expanded to become one of Prague's largest burial sites. 
The stones differ in colour to those usually found in CWGCs as seen in my other site Echoes of war.

Adjacent is the Soviet Military Cemetery which contains the remains of 294 Soviet soldiers and officers. The site is designed in the monumental Soviet military cemetery tradition, featuring a central red granite obelisk surmounted by a gilded Red Star, flanked by sculptural groups depicting mourning soldiers and allegorical figures representing the Motherland. The graves are arranged in formal rows marked by uniform grey granite headstones, each inscribed with the name, rank, and unit of the deceased in Cyrillic script, alongside the dates of birth and death. Many of the interred died during the Prague Uprising between May 5-9, 1945, when Red Army units advanced into the city to support the Czech resistance against the German occupation, or in the final battles along the approaches to the city in the districts of Modřany and Barrandov. The cemetery includes the graves of several Heroes of the Soviet Union, including tank commander Ivan Goncharenko and intelligence officer Alexey Gryaznov, who were killed in action during the street fighting in Prague’s suburbs. Unlike the individual burials of the Commonwealth cemetery, the Soviet section contains both individual graves and three mass graves containing soldiers who couldn't be individually identified or who perished together in armoured vehicles during the final assault. A formal memorial complex was added in 1951, featuring a triumphal archway entrance and eternal flame that burned until 1991, when maintenance responsibilities transferred from the Soviet Embassy to Czech civilian authorities following the withdrawal of Soviet forces. 

 

Left: Memorial to Bulgarian soldiers who were killed in the liberation of Prague in May 1945. Right: Memorial to the members of the First Czechoslovak Army Corps in the USSR who died after the war as a result of wounds.

A remarkable set of graves belonging to members of the Roesskaja Osvoboditelnaja Armija (Russian Liberation Army), established by Russian officers whilst in German captivity under former Red Army general Andrey Vlasov, who tried to unite anti-communist Russians opposed to the communist regime and wanting to liberate Russia from the Stalin dictatorship. During the Prague uprising of 1945, the ROA was thrown in battle by the Germans against Czech insurgents. At the most critical moment of the battle, the ROA turned on the Germans and joined the insurgents.The former Soviet soldiers soon left the city towards west to escape future Russian captive. Nevertheless they were handed over to the Soviets by the American army and shot in the woods around Prague. 

One day a Soviet official had arrived at Plattling and demanded the files on the prisoners. When the Russian POWs got wind of what was going to happen, they mutinied. A senior American officer had placated them by telling them that they would not be handed over, and that they would be resettled in southern Europe – the same lie the Welsh Guards used in Carinthia. Then the tanks rolled in. The American guards had been issued with rubber truncheons and went to the Russian huts in the middle of the night, beating them out of their bunks – ‘Mak snell, mak snell’ – and into waiting lorries. They were taken to Zwiesel near the border. American guards reported that corpses could be seen hanging from trees behind the Russian lines. The precise number of Russian soldiers killed is not known. Estimates range from 300 to 3,000.

MacDonogh (416) After the Reich

Left: Paying my respects at Jan Palach's grave. Palach had initially been interred in Olšany Cemetery but given his gravesite was becoming a national shrine, the Czechoslovak secret police (StB) set out to destroy any memory of Palach and exhumed his remains during the night of October 25, 1973. They then cremated his body and sent the ashes to his mother whilst the body of an anonymous old woman from a rest home was laid in the vacated grave. Palach's mother wasn't allowed to deposit the urn in the local cemetery until 1974. It wasn't until October 25, 1990 that Palach's ashes were officially returned to his initial gravesite. On the 20th anniversary of Palach's death, protests ostensibly in memory of Palach but intended as criticism of the regime escalated into what would be known as "Palach Week". The series of anticommunist demonstrations in Prague between January 15 and 21, 1989 were suppressed by the police, who beat demonstrators and used water cannons, often catching passers-by in the fray. Palach Week is considered one of the catalyst demonstrations which preceded the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia ten months later.    Right: Klement Gottwald's grave, a far cry from his previous resting place. The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia now maintains that common grave. 

New Jewish Cemetery

The New Jewish Cemetery was established in 1890 as the primary burial ground for the city’s Jewish community after the Old Jewish Cemetery in Josefov reached capacity. Spanning approximately ten hectares, it contains over 25,000 graves and remains one of the largest and most important Jewish cemeteries in Europe. Unlike the overcrowded, atmospheric Old Cemetery, the New Cemetery, which is 10 times larger,  follows a more orderly 19th-century layout with straight rows, family plots, and a mix of elaborate Art Nouveau and modest modernist tombstones. Many graves reflect the assimilated, bourgeois Prague Jewish families of the late Habsburg and First Republic periods. The cemetery survived the Nazi occupation relatively intact, though the community that filled it was decimated. Between 1941 and 1945, most of Prague’s Jews were deported to Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz and other camps. Postwar, the site became a place of remembrance for Holocaust victims whose bodies were never recovered. Here on the left are a couple of the many such memorials found on the south wall of the cemetery. The new Jewish cemetery in Olšany was officially opened on July 6, 1890. The cemetery contains numerous Art Nouveau monuments by Czech artists, including Jan Kotěra, Jan Štursa and Josef Václav Myslbek, the creator of the statue of St. Wenceslas in Wenceslas Square.  They provide an insight into the Jewish self-image conveyed by the grave inscriptions from the time before the German occupation in 1938, which was mainly kept in Hebrew.

Franz Kafka's grave which remains one of the most significant sites of Jewish cultural history in Prague. A Jewish German in Czechoslovakia, he would not be recognised until after his death. It's located in Section 21, Row 14. He's buried alongside his parents, Hermann and Julie, in a simple family plot marked by a tall, upright granite tombstone inscribed in Hebrew and German: “Franz Kafka/Dr. jur./3. Juli 1883-3. Juni 1924” along with a Hebrew inscription from the Book of Lamentations: “He is remembered in the hearts of his friends.” Kafka died of laryngeal tuberculosis in Kierling, Austri and his body was transported back to Prague and interred on June 11, 1924. The grave became a major literary pilgrimage site after Kafka’s posthumous fame, particularly following Max Brod’s publication of The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika. Visitors traditionally place small stones on the grave in accordance with Jewish custom. The site has required repeated conservation due to heavy foot traffic and weathering. In recent decades, the Prague Jewish Community and the Franz Kafka Society have maintained the plot, with occasional protective measures around the headstone. The surrounding cemetery, established in 1890, contains thousands of graves from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of prominent Prague Jewish families decimated during the Holocaust. The plaque below the grave commemorates his three younger sisters Elli, Valli and Ottla with an unknown date of death, who were murdered between 1942 and 1943 in the extermination camps Chelmno and Auschwitz-Birkenau respectively. Beside Kafka's grave to the east of the cemetery is this forlorn area on the right that should give even Holocaust-deniers pause for thought- a large area left unfilled by the generation that had been annihilated by the Nazis. If no Holocaust, where are the missing graves?

Cernínský Palác

This was the seat of the Reich Protector from 1939 to 1944. After the war, foreign minister Jan Masaryk (son of Czechoslovakia's first president) lived in a flat on the top floor of the palace. On March 10, 1948 he was found dead in the courtyard below his window, assumed to have been defenestrated, paving the way for forty more years of oppressive rule. 

Masaryk’s body, shown here lying in state, was discovered wearing his silk pyjamas. Despite the frigid temperatures on this winter morning, a single window two stories up, above the body, was wide open, and seemed to indicate whence Masaryk had fallen. In the tradition of Prague’s gruesome defenestrations dating back to the beginning of the 15th century, he was most likely thrown from the window.When the communists started to lose support, they acted quickly with the help of the Soviet Union and seized power in a stunning coup at the end of February 1948. Within two weeks, Masaryk was found dead, and the country was quickly disabused of any notion that the communists would behave any less brutally than the Soviets under Stalin. Masaryk’s funeral took place three days later, and was attended by President Beneš, for all intents and purposes a lame duck who no longer wielded much power and had suffered two strokes the year before, who would resign his post less than three months later.
Across from the building (now serving the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs) is the statue of Beneš I'm standing beside above Both men received a state funeral, though under very different circumstances. While resistance within Czechoslovakia was neither intense nor extensive, Edvard Beneš successfully established a very active Czech government in exile in London. In Great Britain, Beneš formed a Czech legion, a unit of brigade strength, consisting of 5,000 men equipped with tanks, which served in the Normandy landings and in subsequent engagements. Three Czech fighter squadrons and one Czech bomber squadron flew with the Royal Air Force, and Czech intelligence operatives served with the British throughout the war. In July 1941, the Beneš's government concluded a treaty with the Soviet Union by which the USSR recognised the legitimacy of the government in exile and, with the United States and Great Britain, upheld its status as an Allied power.
Bavaria's state premier Edmund Stoiber said at a meeting of the Sudeten German Landsmanschaft that the statue was a provocation given the so-called Beneš decrees which formed a legal basis for the expulsion of over 2.5 million Sudeten Germans from post-war Czechoslovakia.

Standing at the former site of the Stalin Monument, a colossal granite statue that stood on a high plinth overlooking the Vltava River from Letná Park. Unveiled on May Day 1955, the monument, the largest of Stalin in the world, was one of the world's largest representations of a standing figure, measuring 15.5 meters in height and 22 meters in length, including the plinth. The monument was the work of Czech sculptor Otakar Švec, who won the commission after a national competition. The construction process was arduous, taking more than five and a half years to complete and involving hundreds of workers. The monument was made of 17,000 blocks of granite, each carefully sculpted and assembled to create the imposing figure of Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union. It was the world's largest representation of Stalin, and was destroyed in 1962. The monument was located on a huge concrete pedestal, which can still be visited in Letna Park and was the largest group statue in Europe, measuring 15.5 metres in height and 22 metres in length. At 17,000 tonnes, Stalin's jacket button alone, decorated with a hammer and sickle,  was half a metre wide The sculptor was Otakar Švec who, under pressure from the government and secret police whilst receiving hate mail from Czech citizens, killed himself three weeks before the unveiling. The man who posed for him as Stalin - an electrician from the Barrandov film studios, failed to shake off his nickname "Stalin", took to drink, and died three years later. Swedish architectural historian Anders Åman described its impact as “overwhelming”:

In shape, it resembled a wedge pointing inward at the city. Stalin occupied the apex, the Soviet people one side, the Czech and Slovak peoples the other side. At the back, finally, was a relief of the hammer and sickle. It was colossal. It was built of meter-high blocks of granite. . . . Behind Stalin there was a slight gap—to make him stand out as an individual, even if the monument was viewed from the side—and then, on both sides, came the nations rallying in his footsteps...[four figures], representatives of the workers, the peasants, the intelligentsia, and the armed forces.

The statue depicted Stalin in a forward-leaning pose, as if leading the Soviet people into the future. Behind him were arranged smaller figures representing workers, farmers, and intellectuals, all seemingly marching in unison under Stalin's guidance. The monument was a powerful symbol of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic's allegiance to the Soviet Union and its ideology. It was intended to serve as a permanent reminder of the "friendship" and "brotherhood" between the Czechoslovak and Soviet peoples, as well as a tribute to Stalin's leadership. However, the monument's existence was short-lived. After Stalin's death in 1953, his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, initiated a period of "De-Stalinisation," which involved a critical reassessment of Stalin's policies and actions. This political shift had a direct impact on the monument's fate. The monument, therefore, became an increasing source of embarrassment to the Czech Communist Party; in 1962, just seven years after its unveiling, the statue was demolished using 800 kilograms of explosives. The destruction was carried out in secrecy, under the cover of night, to avoid drawing attention. The remnants were buried at an undisclosed location, and the sculptor, Otakar Švec, who had already been grappling with the ethical implications of his work, committed suicide shortly before the statue's completion. The site where the monument stood remained vacant for many years, serving as a stark reminder of a controversial period in Czech history. It wasn't until 1991 that a new monument, the Prague Metronome, was erected on the same plinth. The Metronome is often interpreted as a symbol of the passage of time and the impermanence of political regimes, standing in stark contrast to the monumental permanence that the Stalin statue was intended to convey.

In 1996 the pedestal was briefly used as a base for a 35 foot statue of Michael Jackson made of fiberglass and steel, whose ego at the time rivalled that of Stalin's at the height of the latter's Personality Cult as a promotional stunt for the start of his HIStory European tour. The installation of the statue was met with mixed reactions from the public and the media. On one hand, it was seen as a symbol of the changing times, representing the shift from a Communist regime to a more open, Western-oriented society. The statue's presence in a location once occupied by a monument to Stalin was viewed by some as a triumph of pop culture over political ideology, a sign that the Czech Republic was moving away from its totalitarian past and embracing global trends. On the other hand, the statue's placement was criticised for trivializing a site that had significant historical and political connotations. Critics argued that a statue of a pop star could not adequately replace a monument that, for all its controversy, was a significant part of Czech history. The debate around the statue touched on broader questions about the role of public art and monuments in shaping collective memory and national identity.

Paying my respects at Winston Churchill Square

Winston Churchill’s statue located at Winston Churchill square in the Zizkov district outside the University of Economics in Prague which serves as a lasting tribute to the British leader and signifies the deep respect and gratitude that the Czech people have for his contributions during the war. The statue was unveiled in a ceremony that highlighted Churchill's enduring impact on Czech history and culture, emphasising his role as a defender of democratic values and freedoms that the Czech people hold dear. The presence of the statue is not merely symbolic; it serves as a physical representation of the Czech Republic's alignment with the principles that Churchill stood for. The statue serves as a focal point for commemorations and is a subject of academic and public discourse. It is a reminder of the shared history and values between the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom, a relationship that Churchill himself had a significant role in shaping. Its location outside an educational institution also signifies the importance of Churchill's ideals in the academic and intellectual fabric of the country. This statue is a replica of the statue of Sir Winston Churchill by Belsky from 1969 (shown with former PM Macmillan) that stands in Parliament Square and was unveiled in Prague on November 17, 1989. In the opening ceremony of his monument in Prague there were many the guests including former British Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher, Czech Chamber of Deputies Chairman Vaclav Klaus and Churchill’s grandson, Rupert Soames. Thatcher delivered a speech during the unveiling, emphasising Churchill's enduring impact on Czech history and culture. The event was also attended by local dignitaries, including the Mayor of Prague and other Czech officials. The ceremony was not merely a formality but a significant occasion that highlighted the deep respect and admiration that the Czech people have for Churchill. Thatcher's speech touched upon the shared values of democracy and freedom that both Churchill and the Czech people hold dear, further solidifying the deep-rooted admiration for Churchill in Prague. The date of the unveiling, 17th November, is also significant in the context of Czech history. It marks the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, a peaceful revolution that led to the end of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. The choice of this date for the unveiling of Churchill's statue underscores the alignment of Churchill's democratic ideals with the aspirations of the Czech people, further cementing his revered status in Prague. The statue of Churchill reminds us that the price of freedom can be high, that it may indeed require the sacrifice of “blood, toil, tears and sweat” and that liberty must never be allowed to perish from the earth; it must forever endure.