Operation Anthropoid memorial

[Marek Tucan]

Founding stone for memorial reminding operation Anthropoid (assassination of Reihard Haeydrich) was laid today at the exact same time when the assault took place 66 years ago. The memorial itself should be built in a year.

 

[Jim Martin]

And way past due.

 

God bless those brave men who killed him.

[Marek Tucan]

And way past due.

 

Definitely. Commies didn't promote them too much (to be euphemical) and to be frank, some post-commie top politicians seemed to think about apologising to Germany for killing Heydrich at times...

 

The two SOE operatives (along with five of their colleagues) who did the shooting (or rather bombing) already have a memorial at the place of their last stand - but the memorial of the action itself was sorely missing.

[BansheeOne]

The news that get displayed on the Berlin subway infoscreen system have a "this day in history" section. When I got on the tube this morning I looked up and saw the headline "HEYDRICH KILLED". That gave me pause for a moment trying to establish what year I was in.

[Marek Tucan]

The views are varying, many people think that it was too costly for the effect... I tend to disagree, as they often forget to think about deeper connections - say the fact that Heydrich was leaving for France, Had he managed to stifle the resistance like here, there might be considerable impact on pre-invasion intelligence, resulting in longer preparations for invasion, resaulting in possible longer war, that would carry, among others, also more air raids on our factories (and inevitably cities as well). Plus, it was this action that led to cancellation of Munich treaty by HM Govt and also showed that there IS some resistance here - prior to that it was just few demonstrations and three officers with valuable informations.

[Cromwell]

Interesting that it has taken so long. Brave men indeed. But let us not be too distrcted from the thousands who followed Heydrich's orders. We must ask ourselves what amount of danger to our families and to ourselves we would be prepared to to take in order to refuse immoral orders.

 

I have a question: Did the man who betrayed the Patriots in the Crypt ever get punished?

[Marek Tucan]

I have a question: Did the man who betrayed the Patriots in the Crypt ever get punished?

 

Death by Hanging in 1947, along with another man from the dessants who went over at about same time and along with one Czechoslovakian RAF pilot who aredy went abroad in '39 as Gestapo agent and was tasked with bringing Hurricane MkIIC and intact IFF - while doing so he attacked his Polish instructor who luckily survived, albeit injured, and managed to bail out.

[BillB]

Cheers for all that Tuccy, interesting stuff and as others have said, not before time.

 

BillB

[Marek Tucan]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2962494.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/jun/15/p...ris.theobserver

 

Interesting, wasn't aware of the fact his betrayal was not known to the RAF - seems the news of the post-war trial also didn't make it into British archives and of course Czechoslovakia did't speak much of that betrayal.

To the articles and mysterious handler, his official handler was head of Prague Gestapo, but during his sty in the UK he was most likely "borrowed" to Abwehr or SD - but after his defection, his contacts went through Gestapo channels.

While here, he also played "downed Allied pilot" few times to get information from "fellow" downed cres caught by Germans.

[Paul in Qatar]

There is also the Lidice memorials. Don't you just thank God you were not born in 1920 or so?

[Marek Tucan]

It was a close run for me personally, my granddad enjoyed the hospitality of Dachau for two months (repeated desertion of Totaleinsatz) and also went through one air raid on a railway yard.

 

Lidice is accidentally close to my city, there is a very powerful monument for the Lidice children, and a beautiful rose garden. The central monument there, marking the grave of 173 men of Lidice, is a plain wooden cross, originally built there by Soviet troops in 1945.

Apart from Lidice, there was another village of Ležáky that met the same fate at roughly the same time. Plus there were several villages and hamlets in Slovakia and few in Moravia that got razed for supporting partisans, generally in winter 1944-1945, though last such a case happened in April, 1945.

[Bearded-Dragon]

There is also the Lidice memorials. Don't you just thank God you were not born in 1920 or so?

 

That is an extremely moving memorial.

[BillB]

As it's along similar lines I thought this might be of interest.

 

BillB

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...or-justice.html

 

Orphans of forgotten Nazi massacre hope for justice

By Henry Samuel in Maillé

Last Updated: 2:29AM BST 25/06/2008

 

More than sixty years after Nazi soldiers committed one of France's worst wartime atrocities, orphans of the country's "forgotten massacre" hope that justice will finally be done when German investigators arrive next month.

 

On August 25 1944, when most of France rejoiced in the Allied liberation of Paris, Serge Martin's 10-year-old world was torn apart.

 

One of the 600 inhabitants of Maillé, 25 miles south of Tours in the Loire valley, he had spent the day in a nearby village with his grandparents.

 

But at home, his mother, father, brother and two sisters – one just six months old – were all murdered by retreating German troops.

 

In all, the Nazis massacred 124 people that morning, including two infants, 42 women and 44 children under 14.

 

Only seven were shot, the rest were killed in all manner of ways, including by rifle butt, bayonet, or fire. The soldiers lashed out indiscriminately, even attacking animals.

 

A hand-written pencil note found on several bodies read: "This is punishment for terrorists and their assistants."

 

When Mr Martin was allowed to return home, the ghost village had been razed to the ground, its houses torched and pummelled with mortar.

 

Black and white photos of pretty stone houses are his only reminder of the village he knew as a child, today replaced by soulless modern buildings.

 

"Not a day goes by when I don't think about it. I carry on living but not like everyone else," said Mr Martin, now 74, as he pointed out photos of his radiant young mother with her baby, who would later die in her arms.

 

But after all this time, he is still no nearer to understanding exactly why the Germans, many of whom had cohabited with the villagers during the war, decided to mete out such horrific retribution.

 

"People say it's too late, but it would lift a great weight to know," he said. "It's not a question of making people pay, although if they do catch someone so much the worse for him. For us, it's more about who did it and why."

 

Mr Martin said that he and the 28 remaining villagers orphaned that day had given up on the French judicial system shedding any light on the killings.

 

After a series of botched investigations, only one German, former Wermacht lieutenant, Gustav Schlueter, was tried over the massacre.

 

He was convicted in absentia for war crimes in France in 1952 but lived in Germany, untroubled by extradition requests, until his death in 1965.

 

In France, it is too late to pursue the other estimated 80 Germans who took part in the killing spree or question the 1,000 or so troops who passed by the village that day on the Paris-Bordeaux train that runs alongside it. The statute of limitation on war crimes is 30 years.

 

However there is no such restriction in Germany. After stumbling on an article about the massacre in a German newspaper, Ulrich Maas, a prosecutor in Dortmund, took up the case and will visit Maillé for the first time on July 14.

 

He and two investigators will take fresh statements from survivors to work out which German troops could have taken part in the massacre.

 

They want to know whether lieutenant Schlueter, who commanded regular troops in a neighbouring village, acted alone or if youths from the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division, based 18 miles south in Châtellerault, also took part.

 

It appears unlikely Schlueter would have taken the decision alone to transfer two anti-aircraft guns to Maillé from Tours, where they were defending strategic bridges over the river Loire.

 

The investigators will also seek so establish which event sparked the killing frenzy. The Resistance had sabotaged the local railway three times that month, and a day earlier two German cars were said to have come under fire.

 

The Germans were also angry that locals had successfully managed to hide an American pilot who crash-landed in the area.

 

"But we have nothing precise or official," said Mr Martin.

 

As part of the investigation, French gendarmes have gathered testimonies from 60 people.

 

"Psychologically, it's been crucial, as for the first time their words have been taken into account. For many this is also the first time they have spoken about it," said Sébastien Chevereau, a historian who helped create a memorial centre in the village.

 

Another village, Oradour-sur-Glane, is known by all French as the scene of one of the War's darkest moments, when German troops massacred 642 civilians, including 200 women and as many children on July 10, 1944.

 

"But Maillé is the forgotten massacre. It has been completely overlooked by France, which preferred to celebrate Paris' liberation," said Mr Chevereau.

 

This was not helped by the fact that for decades, locals refused to discuss it, not even with their children. "There was a wall of silence. You never talked about it, never," said the mayor, Bernard Eliaume.

 

But today, as the survivors dwindle, they are speaking out.

 

Christiane Truffier-Blanc, was 17 at the time. Now 81, she remembers cowering in a cellar along with two other families, watching Nazi jackboots march past from an air vent, not daring to move as a bullet whistled near her head.

 

"Why such extremes of cruelty against children, women and the elderly? I'm not sure a judicial inquiry can answer that," she said.

 

"I'm reaching the end of my life but before I embark on the final journey, it would be good to know - why Maillé?"