An article from The Palestine Post reporting on the assassination attempt on the chief of the Gestapo, Reinhard Heydrich which took place on May 27, 1942. The article, printed on May 28, 1942, reports on an announcement made in Berlin of an attempt made on Heydrich’s life; although wounded, his life was not apparently in danger. The articles details the Germans’ search for the perpetrators, the reward being offered for information, and a warning that anyone assisting the perpetrators would be executed.
Reinhard Heydrich was a high-ranking Nazi and SS officer. In September 1941, he was appointed deputy Reich protector of Bohemia and Moravia – the areas of Czechoslovakia annexed to the Nazi Germany. On May 27, 1942 Heydrich was shot by two members of the Czech underground: Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik. A week later, on June 4, 1942, Heydrich died of his wounds.
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Reinhard Heydrich – Reinhard Heydrich was born in 1904 in Germany. As many of his generation, he was indoctrinated with anti-Semitic propaganda that blamed the Jews for the problems of Germany and their defeat in World War I. Heydrich joined several nationalist, anti-Semitic paramilitary groups and in 1931, he joined the Nazi party and became an intelligence officer in the SS. He continued to move up the party, until he was appointed head of the Gestapo in 1934. On September 21, 1939, Heydrich hosted a conference at which he stressed the necessity of keeping the Jews in “as few concentration centres as possible,” as a prerequisite for the “ultimate aim.” Initially, the intention was to solve the “Jewish problem” by allowing Jews to emigrate, but by 1940, after the emigration of 200,000 Jews from Germany, Heydrich began to search for a more comprehensive way of solving the problem. He proposed the “Final Solution,” the plan to murder the Jews of Europe en masse, which was discussed in detail at the conference he led at the Wannsee villa in Berlin on January 20, 1942. Heydrich was involved in the execution of the Final Solution from the very beginning, overseeing the massacre of thousands of Jews and coordinating the logistics and extermination of the Jews in the concentration camps. On September 24, 1941, Hitler appointed Heydrich Reich protector of Bohemia-Moravia – a position which gave Heydrich the power to crush Czech resistance and push for the deportation of Czech Jews to Poland. On 27 May, 1942 at approximately 10:30 am, two Czech patriots, Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik, parachuted from Britain into Prague, ambushed Heydrich’s Mercedes, and threw a bomb into the front seat. Heydrich was seriously wounded and was taken to hospital, where he remained in critical condition for several days. Heydrich died a week later from his wounds. Nazi leaders offered a ten million crown reward for information leading to the capture of the assassins and also swept through the country conducting mass arrests and executions. On June 9, the Nazis marched into the town of Lidice and murdered all of the men, and sent the women to concentration camps and the children to Germany. They continued to murder and arrest until they found and killed Kubis and Gabcik on June 26.
The Palestine Post – The Palestine Post was a daily, English-language newspaper, founded in 1932 in Jerusalem. In 1950, its name was changed to The Jerusalem Post and it continues to be in print to this day. The newspaper’s intended audience was English readers in Palestine and nearby regions: British Mandate officials, local Jews and Arabs, Jewish readers abroad, tourists, and Christian pilgrims. At its peak, in 1944, circulation reached 50,000 newspapers a day. The newspaper covered events in the region and around the world. The Palestine Post offers a glimpse into some of the central events of the twentieth century including World War II, the Holocaust, and the development of the post-war world order. It is a rich source of information on pre-State Israel, the history of the Yishuv (Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael), the creation of the State of Israel, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the 1948 War of Independence. The newspaper includes a wealth of information on Jewish communities around the world.
