The Church of St Cyril and Methodius - Prague - TravBuddy

After watching the film Operation Daybreak, we could not visit Prague, without seeing The Church of St Cyril and Methodius!
This is the church where the Czech resistance fighters who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich were finally trappped and killed themselves, rather than suffer the torment of the Nazis. The leader was Jan Kubis, born in 1913 in Trebic, a town in Southern Moravia. He fled Czechoslovakia during the Second World War and made his way to Great Britain where he was trained as a parachutist in the OSS. Jan and his commrades were dropped into Czechoslovakia to organise the Czechoslovak Resistance and to assassinate the SS-Obergruppenfuhrer, Reinhard Heydrich, also known as "The Butcher of Prague". On May 27th 1942 at approximately 10:30 am Jan Kubis and his commrades mounted an attack on Heydrich's car. As his commrades'Sten gun failed to fire Jan Kubis hurled a grenade which exploded against the car. All of the assassins escaped even though Jan was injured. The mortally injured Heydrich died 10 days later from blood poisoning, caused by fragments of leather from the cars seats. The Gestapo offered 10,000,000 Crowns for information leading to the arrest of the assassins, and eventually the parachutists were betrayed by two of their own team. Jan Kubis and the others took refuge at the Church of St Cyril and Methodius in Resslova Street, just down the hill towards the river from Karlovo Namesti, Prague. The Nazis learned out about their hiding place and on June the 18th 1942 they surrounded the church. Trapped in the crypt the parachutists fought until dawn the following day. The last survivors, Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik used their last bullets to kill each other. Terrible reprisals followed the assassination. The village of Lidice was completely destroyed, all the men were killed, the women taken to concentration camps and most of the children were taken to be adopted by German families.

This was one of the highlights of our trip to Prague.