“Bekanntmachung…” Public Notice issued by Karl Hermann Frank, SS Obergruppenführer of the Reichsprotektorats of Bohemia and Moravia.

High-ranking SS General Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (1904-42), who chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which devised the Final Solution, was ambushed in Prague on May 27th, 1942, by a British-trained team of Czech and Slovak commandos who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to kill Heydrich in an operation code-named Operation Anthropoid. As soon as Heydrich died from injuries a week later, Hitler ordered extraordinary brutal reprisals. All Gestapo agents in the entire Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were mobilized in the search for Heydrich’s assassins and a mass dragnet involving thousands of Nazi soldiers moved into action. Intelligence linked the assassins to the village of Lidice which was subsequently razed to the ground, all its resident adult males were executed and all its women and children were deported to the concentration camp of Ravensbrück where most all were killed. The entire Nazi hierarchy up to and including Hitler himself were consumed with the need to locate the attackers who were eventually tracked down, but heroically committed suicide before capture. This broadside, published just hours following the assassination attempt of Heydrich, declares a state of civil emergency, as well as a 10 million kronen reward for the capture of the perpetrators, followed by a series of threats and reprisals.