No Nazi leader died at the hands of the enemy during World War II. Except one. That was Reinhard Heydrich - the third man of the Third Reich, architect of the Holocaust and ruler of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The legendary Operation Anthropoid, which ended his life 80 years ago, is commemorated by a set of four silver coins from the Czech Mint. Each coin is minted from two troy ounces of pure silver in piedfort design - this means that the coins are twice as thick as traditional minted coins.

Reinhard Heydrich began his career as acting Reich Protector by declaring martial law, executing hundreds of Czech patriots and throwing thousands more into concentration camps on 28 September 1941. The "executioner of the Czech nation" soon boasted that he had eliminated all resistance, but he was soon to be convinced otherwise. The leaders of the foreign resistance, who had taken refuge in Great Britain, had prepared a plan to put an end to his cruel rule. The difficult task of stopping the tyrant's rampage fell to Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, paratroopers operating in British exile. The Slovak and the Czech, great friends, were dropped into the occupied homeland as part of Operation Anthropoid. After months of preparation, they seized the opportunity and successfully attacked Heydrich as he drove through Prague in his limousine on 27 May 1942. They managed to escape from the scene and, together with other paratroopers, hid in the crypt of the Church of St. Cyril and Methodius, where they fought their last battle against incredible odds. However, the Nazi atrocities did not end even after the Protector's death - another wave of repression and senseless murder followed. The extermination of the innocent villages of Lidice and Ležáky became a particularly heinous crime. The world response did not wait long, and the universal condemnation of Nazi crimes against the Czech people eventually led to the invalidation of the shameful Munich Agreement...

The author of all four coins is the medal maker Petr Patka, DiS. The individual reverse sides present exiled President Edvard Beneš and intelligence chief František Moravec; Czechoslovak paratroopers practicing man-to-man combat; Heydrich's limousine shaken by an explosion; monuments dedicated to the murdered inhabitants of Lidice and Ležáky. The obverse side, which is common to all the coins in the set, commemorates the heroic end of the paratroopers by presenting seven crosses, the year 1942 and the window of the crypt of a Prague church with traces of enemy gunfire. As the coins of the Czech Mint are issued with the license of a foreign issuer, which is the island of Niue, their obverse sides still bear its necessary attributes - the name and portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, the nominal value of 5 DOLLARS (NZD) and the year of issue 2022.

The four-piece coin set is stored in an elegant box.