The Crypt of Saints Cyril and Methodius

2008

The Orthodox church of Saints Cyril and Methodius on Resslova street, with the paratroopers' memorial set into the facade beside the crypt window scarred by the 18 June 1942 siege. Place: Orthodox church of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Resslova street, New Town Figures: Gabčík, Kubiš, Valčík, Švarc, Hrubý, Bublík, Opálka (the seven) · Bishop Gorazd · Karel Čurda, the traitor · 750 SS surrounding the church Karel Čurda, a fellow Czech paratrooper from Operation Out Distance, hiding with his mother in Trhová Kamenice, walks into Gestapo headquarters at the Petschek Palace on June 16 and offers names for a million Reichsmarks. He gives them the Moravec family flat in Žižkov, where Anthropoid has been sheltered. The Gestapo raids the Moravecs at dawn on June 17. Marie Moravcová bites a cyanide capsule. Her seventeen-year-old son Ata, after a day of torture (including being shown his mother's severed head in a fish tank), reveals the church. Bishop Gorazd of the Czechoslovak Orthodox Church, with the priests Vladimír Petřek and Václav Čikl and the church chairman Jan Sonnevend, has hidden the paratroopers in the crypt for three weeks. The subject dates from 1942; this photograph was taken in 2008.