Mauthausen Oct 24 1942
Seventy years ago at 0850 hrs was pregnant Mrs Alena Vyhnisova, related to a RAF fighter pilot W/O Jaroslav Vyhnis, shot dead in the back of her neck inside a ´bunker´ of the Mauthausen Extermination Camp.
Alena, her husband as well as several hundred Czech patriots were taken into custody for their assistence to the Secret Agents, who had attempted to kill the prominent Reich´s Protector Reinhard Heydrich on May 27, 1942. Both three children aged fourteen fifteen and the eighty years old father of the Para Secret Agent Josef Valcik were among these victims to Nazi Fury.
The majority of them were Executives of the Sokol Sport Organization and their families, without them an clandestine activity of the Secret Agents on the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia would be out of question. Arriving at the Mauthausen Camp from Theresianstadt in Bohemia on the previous day, they had to wait all the night, having been said for the medical. The camp commander Franz Zierreis cajoled them in, asking about their professions, so none of them had an idea of being shot in the back of their neck while their height being taken was. A low calibre bullet was shot through a wall slot by an SS man.
At first women and girl died within an interval of two three minutes, followed by the men. Sixteen more men of this group were also shot dead in the back of their neck on Jan 26, 1943, but fifteen women were gassed in a chamber inside the bunker on the same day. A Chief Executive of the Sokol Sport Organization and a member of the JINDRA Resistance Group Mr Frantisek Pechacek was torn to pieces by the dogs trained for this act of bestiality on Feb 3, 1944.
A list of these 294 victims to the Nazi Post-Heydrich Era of Terror was read on the occasion of the service held in the Orthodox Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague on Jun 17, 2012 - HERE
Fourty six children of the executed parents were interned as at the Jeneralka Chateau in Prague, as in the Svatoborice and Plana upon Luznice Interment Camps during the period of Aug 1942 – May 1945. A plaque was unveiled to them near the Chateau on June 11, 2012 - HERE