Archive for Reinhard Heydrich

Lidice massacre anniversary

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , on 10 June 2012 by delclem

The Czech village Lidice
was destroyed by German occupying forces on 10 June 1942 in reprisal for the assassination of Nazi deputy governor and Holocaust mastermind Reinhard Heydrich by British-trained Czech patriots in late May (“Operation Anthropoid”; see my earlier post on the subject matter). The exiled Bertolt Brecht dedicated his script to the Hollywood movie Hangman Also Die!  from 1943 to Heydrich’s assissination; the director was the Austrian Fritz Lang). However, most inhabitants of Lidice perished after the attack… > Text on the literary legacy of the massacre (c) Radio Prague, 2012

Also see the letter the German president J. Gauck wrote to the Czech president on the occasion of the anniversary.

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HHhH

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on 27 May 2012 by delclem

“HHhH is Reinhard Heydrich, the ‘butcher of Prague’, a man who physically and ideologically embodied the Nazi regime. His immediate superior was Heinrich Himmler, and rumours were whispered in the shadows of the Third Reich that ‘Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich’ – in German, Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich, or HHhH.

The book traces the planning, execution and aftermath of Operation Anthropoid, the resistance’s successful plot to assassinate Heydrich in Prague, the city he commanded as Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. The two heroes of the novel are Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis, the almost unbearably brave assassins, but Heydrich, in all his horror, is the central character. “All the characters are real. All the events depicted are true,” asserts the book’s cover. And hence Binet’s dilemma.” Read the full review in THE IRISH TIMES, 2012

PS. Heydrich was assassinated exactly 70 years ago.
>Another review (guardian.co.uk)

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