Anthropoid was the cover name for a secret parachute airdrop sent from the United Kingdom during World War II to the territory of the then Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. It consisted of two soldiers of the Czechoslovak exile army Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. It was a diversionary operation, the main aim of which was assassination of the deputy Reich-Protector Reinhard Heydrich, which took place on May 27, 1942. The operation was successful, Heydrich died as a result of his injuries on June 4, 1942. However, the participants in the operation paid for their act with their lives. Together with other paratroopers, they succumbed on June 18, 1942 in a fight outnumbered by Nazi soldiers in the Church of St. Cyril and Methodius in Prague.

The first event from our "80 Years of Operation Anthropoid" commemorative series was the laying of a poppy wreath in the 3-8 Porchester Gate building on London's Bayswater Road. Seventy years ago, flats on the first and the sixth floor of the this building on the edge of Kensington Gardens hosted the Second Department of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Defense in Exile, as the Czechoslovak military secret service was officially called back then. It was headed by colonel František Moravec, one of the main brains of Operation Anthropoid, who on these premises, in October 1941, started planning the operation after Hitler sent Reinhard Heydrich, one of the highest-ranking officials of the Nazi regime, to Czechoslovakia in September the same year.

On January 20, Ambassador Marie Chatardová, together with her husband and military representatives of the Czech Republic, laid a wreath at the famous wall where the Czech paratroopers were photographed, before they were sent to be dropped over the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.