While the battle of the choir was going on, Gabcik and three other parachutists waited in the crypt, unable to help.  After a slight delay, the Germans discovered the trap door from the nave to the crypt and, with that, the men hidden therein.  Repeated effort to smoke, shoot and flood them out failed.  When they ran low on ammunition, Gabcik and his colleagues committed suicide, apparently by exploding their spare mines. JR.

Death in Prague (12)

Jan Kubis after death, killed in the choir of the Cathedral of Sts Cyril and Methodius, 18 June, 1942.  JR.

Death in Prague (11)

The traitor Curda was paid his reward, and worked as a Gestapo agent to the end of the war.  He was subsequently arrested and hanged for treason by the Czechoslovak government in 1946.

Karl Hermann Frank and Kurt Daluege were convicted of war crimes and hanged by the Czech government after the war, in part on foot of their involvement in the Lidice massacre.

The Orthodox bishop of the Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius (who offered himself as responsible person for the concealment of the parachutists in his church) along with his clergy and staff, were liquidated by the Gestapo.  The bishop was subsequently raised to Sainthood by the Orthodox Church.

Curda's revelations allowed the Germans more or less to finish off organised Czech resistance.  However, the Czech government in exile had gained one of the greatest resistance-based propaganda coups of the war, that greatly raised their credibility among Allied leaders.

Whatever salutory benefit the Nazis had hoped to gain from the eradication of Lidice, in reality, the reprisal backfired badly.  News of the massacre provoked widespread revulsion in Allied and neutral countries.  Streets and even villages and towns were renamed "Lidice" across the world.

A particularly potent response came from the Lidice folks' fellow miners in Stoke-on-Trent in the English Midlands. who organised the "Lidice will Live" campaign to commemorate the massacre, and to raise funds for the reconstruction of the village after the war.  The village was reconstructed, on a site adjacent to the original site.  Strong ties between the Stoke-on-Trent area and the new Lidice persist to this day.

There are heroes in the world.

Nothing else occurs.

Best regards, JR.