Cathedral of Sts Cyril and Methodius: The Crypt of the Paratroopers
Why is it significant?
Stop on the pavement of Resslova street, beside the baroque church, and look at the small window of the crypt just above the ground. The stone around it is pocked and gouged by bullets. Above it, a memorial plaque, and often a few flowers and candles. Take a moment.
Key Facts
| Place | Cathedral of Sts Cyril and Methodius: The Crypt of the Paratroopers |
|---|---|
| Address | Resslova 9a, 120 00 Praha 2, Czechia |
| Geo Coordinates | 50.07590, 14.41680 |
| Part of Walk | Wenceslas Square to the Dancing House: Prague's Century of Revolutions, 1918–1989 |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop on the pavement of Resslova street, beside the baroque church, and look at the small window of the crypt just above the ground. The stone around it is pocked and gouged by bullets. Above it, a memorial plaque, and often a few flowers and candles. Take a moment. What happened behind that window deserves it.
On 27 May 1942, two Czechoslovak soldiers trained in Britain and parachuted into the occupied country, the Slovak Jozef Gabčík and the Czech Jan Kubiš, ambushed the car of Reinhard Heydrich in the northern suburb of Libeň. Heydrich was the acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, and one of the principal architects of the Holocaust. He died of his wounds on 4 June. It was Operation Anthropoid, the only successful assassination of a top Nazi leader of the war.
Gabčík, Kubiš and five other paratroopers hid here in the crypt of this church, sheltered by the Orthodox clergy. Then one of their own comrades, Karel Čurda, went to the Gestapo. Before dawn on 18 June, hundreds of SS troops surrounded the church. Three men fought from the gallery for about two hours. The other four held the crypt as the Germans tried tear gas, then fire hoses to flood it. None of the seven was taken alive.
The revenge was terrible. The villages of Lidice and Ležáky were wiped from the map, their men shot, their women and children sent to camps. Bishop Gorazd, who had taken responsibility for sheltering the soldiers, was executed with the priests of this church. Thousands of Czechs died in the reprisals. Historians still debate the price; few doubt the courage.
The church itself was built in the 1730s for the Catholics as Saint Charles Borromeo and handed to the Czechoslovak Orthodox Church in the 1930s. The crypt is a quiet national memorial now. When you are ready, walk back down Resslova towards the river, to the corner of Jiráskovo náměstí, where a building appears to be dancing.