An impressive collage of documents of the time, visual materials and thrilling fictional passages gives a tangible portrait of the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague which changed history.

Essay, Other  |  English sample translation available

Using an innovative approach, this book describes the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia with a terrifying vividness: it is compiled of reports from the press of the time, police decrees, the Gestapo’s investigation reports, rich visual material, maps, messages, but also recipes and short prosaic passages in which real historical characters appear. With insistent emotions and through the eyes of a screenwriter, the author presents Operation Anthropoid, an airdrop of parachutists with the aim to assassinate the acting Reich protector, Reinhard Heydrich. The author proceeds chronologically from the planning for the assassination in Great Britain in 1941 to the punishments of people involved in this operation in the spring of 1942 and other reprisals including the destruction of several Czech villages.

Jiří Padevět (1966), a writer dealing predominantly with the history of the WWII resistance movement, the Holocaust and war events. After studying geodetics, working as a surveyor and teacher, he worked as a bookseller. Since 2006 he has been director of the publishing house Academia. He is the author of many books with historical themes, such as the award-winning Průvodce protektorátní Prahou (Guide to Protectorate Prague). In 2016, he published the book Anthropoid (with Pavel Šmejkal) and one year later Dotek Anthropoidu (The Touch of Anthropoid). Also in these guidebooks about the Nazi occupation and its consequences, Jiří Padevět inventively describes the atmosphere in Prague in 1942 using a collage of documents of the time and fictional passages. Jiří Padevět was awarded an Operation Anthropoid commemorative medal.