The series National Heroes introduces the third woman who sacrificed herself for a higher good. The gold ducat of the Czech Mint comemmorates the resistance fighter Irena Bernášková.

As the Nazis took control of all the media after the establishment of the protectorate and used it to spread their propaganda, the illegal press became an objective source of information. The most important periodical of the resistance was the magazine V boj, which was written in the spring of 1939. Many important artists took part in its publication - for example, Jaroslav Seifert wrote anti-occupation poems for it. The artistic side of the matter was processed by the painter and graphic artist Vojtěch Preissig, who worked in the foreign resistance during the First World War. When the Gestapo liquidated the first publishing set of V boj magazine at the end of 1939, two groups continued to publish it without knowing each other. The first group consisted of officers from the resistance organization entitled Defense of the Nation. The representatives of the second group were Vojtěch Preissig and his daughter Irena Bernášková, who soon became the main personality of the editorial board. Although the Gestapo was intensively searching for "Inka", she managed to publish dozens of issues of the magazine. In the end, however, she was arrested with false documents. During the interrogations, she took all the blame, and saved a number of other resistance fighters. She acted fearlessly even when she was on trial. Although she was fluent in German, she refused to speak German and said that she hoped for the defeat of evil and believed in the restoration of the Czechoslovak Republic. As the first Czech woman, she was sentenced by the Nazis to death, which was carried out by guillotine in the Berlin prison Plötzensee…

The obverse side of the ducat, which is the work of academic sculptor Jiří Dostál, presents a sad female portrait supplemented with an inscription IRENA BERNÁŠKOVÁ 7. 2. 1904 PRAHA. The horizontal line in the neck area symbolizes the way in which the resistance fighter was killed. The inscription POPRAVENA GILOTINOU 26. 8. 1942 BERLÍN (EXECUTED BY A GUILOTINE on August 26, 1942, BERLIN), draws attention to the same. The reverse side is then dedicated to the magazine V boj. The relief is inspired by the 50th issue from 1940, the cover of which with the Czechoslovakian lion, which draws the swastika, was drawn by Vojtěch Preissig.

The ducat is stored in a spectacular packaging in the form of a book that contains a treatise written by the historian PhDr. Petr Koura, Ph.D. Remember that you can store your collection of National Heroes in a practical collector's box.