Church of Sts Cyril and Methodius and the Paratroopers Crypt

Church · Nové Město (New Town), Resslova streetPrague,Czechia

A Prague church whose stone crypt hid the seven parachutists who killed Heydrich, the ventilation slit still marked where the SS fired through it.

The Church of Sts Cyril and Methodius stands on Resslova street, and the part people come for is below it. A stone crypt under the nave hid seven Czechoslovak parachutists in June 1942, after two of them had attacked Reinhard Heydrich's car. You can go down into it, and from the pavement outside you can see the ventilation slit the SS fired and gassed through, the marks still in the stone around it. Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš attacked the car at the Libeň curve on 27 May 1942, and Heydrich died of the wound on 4 June. The parish hid the seven men under the floor of its own church. An informer gave them up, and the building was stormed at dawn on 18 June; none of the seven came out alive. The clergy were executed in September, the Orthodox Church was banned in the Protectorate, and two villages were destroyed in the reprisals.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The way in is the side door on Resslova, not the church — above is a working cathedral with its own services, below is the memorial museum, and they are entered separately.
Stand at the ventilation slit from the pavement — the scars around the opening in the outer wall are where the siege was fought from the street, and it costs nothing and is there at any hour.
Keep the two dates apart — the attack on the car was on 27 May and it happened elsewhere in the city; what took place at this address was the siege of 18 June, three weeks later.
Seven men died in the room you are standing in — it is visited by Czech school groups and by families, and the crypt is treated as a grave rather than as a museum floor.
The cost did not stop with the seven — the priests who hid them were shot in September and their church was banned outright, which is the part of the story the crypt itself explains best.

Things to do

1
Put your hand near the ventilation slit
On the Resslova pavement, find the low opening in the church wall with the scarring around it. This is where the tear gas, the grenades and finally the water went in, and where the attack was directed from. It is at street level, and people walk past it all day without knowing what it is.
2
Stand in the crypt itself
Go down the narrow stairs into the vault. It is a low stone room with burial niches in the walls, and there is nothing in it that softens what happened. Four men were in here for their last hours, digging at a wall towards a sewer they never reached. It takes about a minute to see and rather longer to leave.