In memory of the men who killed Reinhard Heydrich – the Nazi massmurderer

First Lieutenant Adolf Opálka (4 January 1915 – 18 June 1942) was a Czechoslovak soldier. He was a member of the Czech sabotage group Out Distance, a World War II anti-Nazi resistance group, and a participant in Operation Anthropoid, the successful mission to kill Reinhard Heydrich.

Opálka (cover name "Adolf Král"), Ivan Kolařík ("Jan Krátký"), and Karel Čurda ("Karel Vrbas") secretly parachuted into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on 28 March 1942 to perform covert operations including bomber navigation and sabotage. The operations of Out Distance were complicated from the beginning. A navigational mistake by the Handley Page Halifax plane bringing them in caused the entire group to be dropped at the wrong location. This, together with the loss of equipment, led to the splitting up of the group. Opálka contacted captain Alfréd Bartoš from the group Silver-A and informed him of the situation. He later joined the group gathered around Operation Anthropoid in Prague and became leader of the Prague parachuters.
After the successful kill of Heydrich with a modified anti-tank grenade, Opálka and his six fellow combatants (Josef Bublík, Josef Gabčík, Jan Hrubý, Jan Kubiš, Josef Valčík, and Jaroslav Švarc) were trapped in the Church of St. Cyril and St. Methodious in Prague. At 4:15 p.m. on 18 June 1942, the church was besieged by 800 soldiers of the Wehrmacht Heer and Waffen-SS. After a seven-hours fight, the outnumbered group of paratroopers fell. All died, including First Lieutenant Opálka who, injured by shrapnel, committed suicide.

Reinhard Heydrich (7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was SS-Obergruppenführer  and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office (including SD, Gestapo, and Kripo) and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia.Heydrich chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, which laid out plans for the final solution to the Jewish Question—the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. He was attacked in Prague on 27 May 1942 by a British-trained team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent on behalf of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to kill him in an operation named Operation Anthropoid. He died from his injuries a week later. Intelligence falsely linked the assassins to the towns of Lidice and Ležáky. In retaliation, Heinrich Himmler ordered over 13,000 people arrested. The village of Lidice was razed to the ground and all but a handful of its women and children were deported and killed in Nazi concentration camps; all male residents over the age of 16 were shot by firing squads. At least 1,300 people were murdered in the wake of Heydrich's death. Historians regard him as the darkest figure within the Nazi elite. Hitler christened him "The Man with the Iron Heart".