St. Cyril and Methodius Cathedral

On Thursday we were initially suppose to have our mid-term, but it was moved to today-- it wasn't too bad at all! So instead, after a bit of lecture, we went on a field trip to the St. Cyril and Methodius Church. Before coming here, I would have had no idea what the significance of this church was, but it is definitely so much more than any of the other churches I've seen here so far. Coincidentally, our first full day in Prague-- almost 3 weeks ago-- marked the 70th anniversary of the assasination of Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich was the head Nzai in Bohemia and Moravia during WWII. Our trip to St. Cyril and Methodius fully connected to that, in that it was the final hiding spot of the seven soldiers leading the suicide mission that was Heydrich's assasination. Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik headed the mission, with the help of five other soldiers. Following the assasination iteself, the soldiers had made it through a number of safe houses which eventually led them to the church. They were betrayed and their hiding spot was revealed to the Nazis though. What we explored was the crypt of the church, where after hours of attempts by the Nazis to break in, the soldiers committed suicide to avoid torture at the point when it was clear the Nazis would soon make it into the crypt.

The crypt:

The stairwell the Nazis eventually broke into:

The only window, through which the Nazis tried shooting into and flooding the crypt. Also, a hole dug as an attempt to escape underground:

Not having known really anything about this before, and then to come to Prague and this to be one of the first things that I heard about, it was interesting to get to visit this place. The blogging app I'm using to post has been completely tweaking out while putting together this post, so I'm going to leave it at that for now until I figure this out. Hopefully it's alright . . .