Operation Anthropoid Memorial
The Operation Anthropoid memorial is a memorial in the Libeň district of Prague , commemorating the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich on May 27, 1942. The Operation Anthropoid was by Czech resistance fighters in January Kubiš and the Slovak resistance fighters Jozef Gabčík executed. Due to the jamming of the used machine gun and the incorrect throwing of the Hawkins grenade , Heydrich could not be killed immediately, but he died of the consequences eight days after the attack. As Deputy Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia and as the architect of the so-called “ Final Solution ”, Heydrich was responsible for numerous Nazi crimes. It was - besides the assassination attempt on the rather insignificant Wilhelm Gustloff in Davos , Switzerland in 1936 - the only successful attack on a leading Nazi functionary - and at a place within his direct sphere of influence.
The memorial was built in 2009 at the Vychovatelna bus stop , which is now exactly where the attack took place.
The assassination
“Heydrich's murder was undoubtedly the most important act of the Czech resistance movement against the Nazi occupation on a Europe-wide level. None of the resistance movements in the other countries that were occupied by the Nazis managed to achieve such a high-level goal. "
Reinhard Heydrich , head of the Reich Security Main Office and chief architect of the Holocaust , was the de facto successor to Konstantin von Neurath as Reich Protector in occupied Bohemia and Moravia from the end of September 1941 . The Czechoslovak government-in-exile , based in London, planned Heydrich's assassination under the code name Operation Anthropoid . At the end of December 1941, some members of the Czechoslovak army in exile were parachuted near Prague, including officers Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš . The two men - the former Slovak, the latter Czech - carried out the attack on Heydrich on May 27, 1942, which almost failed because Gabčík's Sten Gun jammed. The grenade thrown by Kubiš missed the interior of Heydrich's car and only destroyed the right wheel arch. Heydrich survived for the time being, but died eight days later of sepsis . Gabčík and Kubiš fled, were able to hide together with five other resistance fighters in the church of St. Cyril and Method , were betrayed and finally fought in the early morning hours of June 18, 1942 in a fire fight lasting several hours against 350 SS men . Kubiš and two other men fell inside the church, the others fled into the crypt and took their own lives after the SS had used tear gas and began to flood the crypt.
planning
After the fall of the Nazi regime, Kubiš and Gabčík were venerated as national heroes in the re-established Czechoslovakia. The Slovak municipality Gabčíkovo was named after Jozef Gabčík and consequently the Danube power plant Gabčíkovo named after it . Numerous streets in the Czech Republic and Slovakia bear the names of Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. However, there was no central monument. The Prague 8 district took on this task, as the attack was carried out in its Libeň district . At the scene of the action there is a busy arterial road to the north today.
She formulated the competition for the memorial as a monumental symbol of the determination and bravery of the Czechoslovak resistance and as a place of mourning for the grief over the gruesome murder of those involved and bystanders in the attack in 1942. On April 18, 2008, a competition was announced. Twenty submissions were received; the first prize went to a joint design by the sculptors David Moješčík and Michal Šmeral and the architects Miroslava Tůmová and Jiří Gulbis . The two sculptors had previously designed some works of art in public spaces.
layout
The basic concept of the monument is based on the triangular wedge of the flag of Czechoslovakia , which is now the flag of the Czech Republic . The silhouettes of the resistance fighters stand nine meters above the ground in an almost suicidal position on the edge of the pedestal. This corresponds to the danger of an act of resistance under the German dictatorship and occupation . Two of the figures represent Czechoslovak soldiers, the third, a civilian, represents the important role of civil resistance . The posture of the figures is reminiscent of that of the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci (1490, as part of his anatomy sketches). Here again a connection was made to the name of the operation, Leonardo's drawing is viewed as a kind of basis for anthropometry . At the same time, the choice of this attitude represents a reduction to the essential, a reference to “bare existence”. The figures were presented realistically, but without characteristics of specific people, without portraits of those involved. As a result, the three stand for the Czechoslovak resistance in the years 1939 to 1945. The depersonalization of the soldiers also refers to the concept of the “ unknown soldier ”.
Inscription at the foot of the monument:
“At this place on May 27, 1942 at 10:35 am, the heroic Czechoslovak paratroopers Jan Kubiš and Josef Gabčík carried out one of the most important acts of resistance of the Second World War - the murder of the incumbent Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich. They could only carry out their mission with the help of a hundred Czech patriots, who paid for their courage with their lives. "
The figures are made of cast bronze , the templates were statues modeled from clay. The column is made of welded steel, encased in Korten steel , a particularly weatherproof type of structural steel. The monument was financed by the Prague 8 district, the cost was around 5 million Czech crowns.
revelation
The memorial was opened to the public on May 27, 2009 at 10:35 a.m., exactly 67 years after the attack. The ceremony was carried out by representatives from Prague 8 , in the presence of representatives of the Military History Institute in Prague and contemporary witnesses. On the same day, the exhibition From Munich to the Assassination was opened at Libeň Castle . There was also a memorial ceremony in the Ďáblice cemetery.
Web links
- ASSASSINATION Operation ANTHROPOID 1941–1942 , description of the assassination attempt by Michal Burian, Aleš Knížek, Jiří Rajlich, Eduard Stehlík, Prague 2002 (English)
- MojDa , website of one of the designing artists
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Operace Anthropoid má svůj pomník, po 67 letech ( Czech ) In: Lidové noviny . lidovky.cz (originally ČTK ). May 27, 2009. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
- ↑ a b The quote and the summary of the attack come from the publication listed under web links : ASSASSINATION Operation ANTHROPOID 1941–1942 (the quote from Jaroslav Tvrdík can be found on page 3, short biographies of Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík are printed on page 14, the description of the attack on pages 64 and 65)
- ↑ a b c d e Prague 8 : Praha 8: Operation Anthropoid , description of the monument (English), accessed on November 21, 2017.
Coordinates: 50 ° 7 '4.22 " N , 14 ° 27' 54.68" O