Berlin Trip : Topography of Terror Museum (The Czechoslovaks Got Him T-Shirt)

I read quite a lot about Reinhard Heydrich during my time in Berlin, not least because later on in my trip I went to the House of the Wannsee Conference. He’s obviously come up many times before in my trips to museums and concentration camps (yeah, keep it upbeat….) but this museum has a particularly big display about him. More on that later, but this T-Shirt caught my eye. It has the title of “Czechoslovaks Got Him” and his assassination is seen as something of a national achievement and items are still sold today mocking his death. What a legacy for him to have….. But, Heydrich was one of the most evil of all the Nazis, and there were a fair few dotted around to set that bar very high.

Heydrich was the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, but he was effectively in charge of delivering the Holocaust. His execution was demanded and two very brave men, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, were parachuted into Czechoslovakia in December 1941 to plan his assassination. On the morning of 27 May 1942, Heydrich was being driven to Prague Castle in an open-top car when Gabčík and Kubiš attacked him with a Sten submachine gun and a grenade. The grenade exploded,injuring Heydrich, who died from his wounds a week later. The Nazi response was obscene, but more on that later. The order to kill Heydrich came from the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, led by President Edvard Beneš, with the support and training provided by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). Every year on the anniversary of his death there’s a large group who gather at the site of where he died, as a memorial to the bravery of Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš.