Prague 2 unveils new plaques for Operation Anthropoid

Prague 2 is commemorating the 75th anniversary of Operation Anthropoid with five new plaques. Operation Anthropoid was the World War II mission where Czech paratroopers were dropped by Britian's Royal Air Force to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, acting protector of Bohemia and Moravia and the third-highest Nazi official at the time.

Heydrich was wounded May 27, 1942, and died June 4 from complications from the attack. All of the paratroopers were captured and executed, along with members of the Czechoslovak resistance who helped them and other Czechoslovak patriots who were not directly involved.

The first two new plaques were unveiled on Italská Street in memory of two couples who were executed. The plaque at Italská 7 is for the married couple Vladimír Bergauer and Markéta Bergauerová. They had helped Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Littledale, a British pilot who escaped from a prison camp.

At Italská 25 there is a new plaque for Dr. Soběslav Sobek and his wife Marie Sobková. The doctor asked a colleague to treat the wounded eye of one of the paratroopers in Operation Anthropoid, Jan Kubiš. The Sobeks and the Bergauers were executed in Mauthausen on Oct. 24, 1942, along with more than 200 other patriots.

After the death of Heydrich a state of emergency was declared and thousands of people were arrested. In total, 1,590 were executed. The villages of Lidice and Ležáky were destroyed, and the occupants either executed or sent to concentration camps.

The story of Operation Anthropoid was told recently in the film Anthropoid, which premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in July 2016. Another film about the same story called HHhH is set to be released May 25. Anthropoid was shot mainly in Prague, while HHhH was shot in Hungary with just some exteriors shot in Prague. The title of the latter stands for Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich, meaning Himmler's brain is called Heydrich. The story of Lidice was told in a film called Lidice, released in 2011.

There will be events in Prague to mark the anniversary of the assassination. A tent camp like the one the paratroopers lived in in the UK will be built in June in Karlovo náměstí, not far from the church where most of the paratroopers were captured.