Update: 04/09/2022 18:22
Issued by: 04/09/2022, 18:22

Prague – In Prague, they unveiled the art installation Girl with a bicycle in memory of the youngest murdered victim of German terror after the assassination of the acting Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich. She became a fourteen-year-old Jindřiška Nováková when she cleared the bike on which one of the plotters of the assassination, Jan Kubiš, was fleeing. After her capture, the Nazis deported her to the Mathausen concentration camp, where she died on October 24. The installation by Lukáš Wagner was placed in the Bohumil Hrabal Elementary School building in Libni, where the girl attended.

The work consists of many hoops, between which wires are stretched, so that each separately resembles bicycle wheels. They are joined together to form a ball. At the top sits the iron outline of a girl with her hand outstretched to the heavens. It will be in the courtyard permanently with play elements. The entire project, including play elements for children, cost two million crowns.

“The work presents a contrast between the state’s 14-year-old girls and the monstrous violence of the German fascists,” said the mayor of Prague 8 Ondřej Gros (ODS).

The official unveiling took place as part of the Libeň festivities. The Libeň festivities of the Libeň Castle with music and dance performances or demonstrations of traditional crafts became part of them. As part of the festive event, Foestro’s chamber singing association and children from Na Korábě school performed.

This year, Prague 8 commemorated the 80th anniversary of the assassination of Heydrich by Czechoslovak paratroopers on May 27 with a reconstruction of the attack. It took place at the bend near the Anthropoid Memorial in Prague-Libní, near the intersection with Vychovatelna, where there was also a commemorative ceremony and a ceremonial parade of soldiers and civilians in period clothing and historical military equipment. The event also included the premiere of the film directed by Oliver Malina-Morgenstern, Stories of Patriots.

For Heydrich, a ruthless Nazi and co-author of the so-called final solution to the Jewish question, the road under Vychovatelna in Libni, where he passed almost every day, became fatal. Heydrich survived the attack, but the dirt carried into his wounds led to sepsis. He died a few days later on June 4, 1942. In retaliation, the Nazis wiped out the villages of Lidice and Ležáky and executed many resistance fighters and people who helped them. Kubiš with Gabčík and other comrades died on June 18 after a battle when they refused to surrender and leave the betrayed hiding place in the crypt of the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague.

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