65 years on, Czech war heroes still await a tombstone

By DPA

Prague : As a military band played the Czech national anthem, 94-year-old colonel Vaclav Vondrak kicked his heels and saluted amid younger onlookers of a far less military bearing.


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Far from the dignitaries, and surrounded by spectators in T-shirts and jeans, he wore his bright-green Czechoslovak Army uniform from times long gone. Each year, Vondrak comes to honour seven of his friends who lost their lives 65 years ago in six-hours of bloodshed in an Orthodox church across the street.

They were British-trained Czechoslovak paratroopers, hiding after a successful mission codenamed Anthropoid to assassinate Reinhardt Heydrich, despised top Nazi in occupied Czech lands. Historians estimate that some 5,000 Czechs had died in revenge attacks.

"It is very difficult to talk about it," Vondrak says of the lost friends, the tears welling in his eyes.

Vondrak is one of the few living Czech heroes who sweated through paratrooper training with the honoured men at a farm in Scotland.

"I slept in the same bunk bed with (lieutenant Jaroslav) Svarc," he recalls, referring to one of those killed 65 years ago.

While his friends leaped to a dangerous mission on Czech soil in December 1941, Vondrak broke his leg in his third practice descent and ended up as a tank commander.

Now, as politicians lay wreaths on the sidewalk under a memorial plague on the church's wall, a quiet, overlooked corner of Prague's Dablice cemetery has been overgrown with weeds.

There is no tombstone in sight. No one would ever know it is here where the heroes rest.

"There is still much injustice," Vondrak sighs, adding later, "Our governments sometimes take long time to take care of very important things."

The communists had no interest in marking the grave as they buried executed political prisoners at their side, says historian Eduard Stehlik.

The cemetery has always been a resting place for outcasts or enemies of their times – the paratroopers, executed Nazi collaborators or victims of communist-era political trials.

Even two of the mission's paratroopers who had turned in their companions to the Gestapo are likely to be resting there. "The combination of people there is truly horrifying," Stehlik says.

Nothing had changed since the fall of communism until historians brought what Stehlik calls "the indefensible situation" to the attention of the press last year.

"Only then did things start moving. And a tombstone should be finally put up next year," he adds. "People began to understand that history did not start in 1989," he says.

Historians and politicians have been quarrelling about placing a memorial in the curve where two of the heroes, Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis, fatally wounded the despised protector on May 27, 1942.

But on Monday, a group of self-proclaimed patriots lost patience and put up their own memorial plaque in wee hours of the morning.

While Vondrak, awarded the Legion of Honour by the French, is already on his way home to one of Prague's blue-collar neighbourhoods, Czech President Vaclav Klaus steps out of the proclaiming to reporters about maintaining traditions.

When asked about the tombless mass grave, he waved the question away and settled into his limousine.

"At this moment I can't comment on that," Defence Minister Vlasta Parkanova said moments later – and walked away before she could be asked why.

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