The first gold coin from the Czech Mint's four-part miniseries entitled Operation Anthropoid, which is being released on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, commemorates the representatives of the Czechoslovak foreign resistance.

The Second World War and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia are among the darkest chapters of Czech history. Nazi dictatorship was established in 1939 in the remnants of our country, which had been broken up by the Munich dictate. Our only purpose then became to serve the Third Reich and the greedy demands of its leader. Although evil tongues claim that we cowardly submitted instead of fighting, this is not true. We did not surrender. While some patriots remained in the occupied homeland to fight on the home front, others went into exile to rally the whole world to the fight against evil. The foreign resistance was formed by ordinary people from all classes of society - from rank and file soldiers to top politicians. These heroes, thanks to whom our nation overcame the hardships of war with honour, were active all over the world - in Africa, the Soviet Union and Great Britain. It was the island kingdom that became home to the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and President Edvard Beneš. He tried to get the democratic states to annul the Munich Agreement and to acknowledge the mistake they had made in handing Czechoslovakia over to Germany as a peace offering. To prove that we were valid members of the war effort, we came with a plan to eliminate one of the highest ranking Nazis - Reinhard Heydrich, the third man of the Third Reich, who ruled the Protectorate with an iron hand. Czechoslovak paratroopers were assigned the key task...

The reverse side of the commemorative coin is the work of the medal maker Petr Patka, DiS. "I used a photograph of the main architects of the idea of assassinating the Reich Protector as a model. While the exiled President Edvard Beneš came up with the actual proposal for the action, the planning, technical preparations and selection of suitable candidates from among the Czechoslovak volunteers was entrusted to the head of military intelligence, František Moravec," explains the author of the coin. The double portrait on the reverse side is supplemented with the texts ATENTÁT – ODBOJ VE VELKÉ BRITÁNII – FRANTIŠEK MORAVEC – EDVARD BENEŠ (ATTENTATE - RESISTANCE IN GREAT BRITAIN - FRANTIŠEK MORAVEC - EDVARD BENEŠ). The obverse side, which is common to the entire four-part miniseries, commemorates the fate of the heroic Czechoslovak paratroopers who found death in the crypt of a Prague church - it presents seven crosses, the year 1942 and the window of the crypt with clear traces of gunfire. As the licence to issue commemorative coins of the Czech Mint is granted by the Pacific island of Niue, the obverse side still bears its necessary attributes - the name and portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, the nominal value of 10 DOLLARS (NZD) and the year of issue 2022.

The story of the legendary wartime operation continues on the next three coins. The complete collection can be stored in a collector's case that can also be found in the Czech Mint's offer.