Prague — In the early hours of 15 March 1939, columns of German Wehrmacht troops crossed into Bohemia and Moravia without meeting organized resistance, and by dawn armored vehicles had entered Prague, sealing the fate of the Czechoslovak state and opening a chapter of occupation that would culminate three years later in the annihilation of the settlement of Ležáky and the murder of 51 of its inhabitants.
The occupation followed directly from the political collapse of the previous night, when President Emil Hacha, under intense pressure in Berlin, accepted German demands and effectively surrendered control of the country. Snow and bitter cold accompanied the German arrival. Civilians watched in silence as soldiers marched through the streets and seized government buildings, communication centers, and strategic points across the capital.
By morning, Prague was fully in German hands. Similar scenes unfolded across the rest of the territory, where local authorities were replaced or subordinated to German command. On that same day, Adolf Hitler arrived at Prague Castle and proclaimed the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, formalizing the reality on the ground and marking the complete loss of sovereignty.
What followed was an occupation defined by repression, resistance, and terror. The Gestapo and other Nazi security services monitored the population, suppressed political opposition, and targeted individuals and groups considered hostile to German rule. Jewish inhabitants were subjected to persecution, deportation, and eventual extermination, while the economy of the Protectorate was integrated into the German war effort, with industry redirected toward military production and labor strictly controlled.
Despite these harsh conditions, resistance activity developed across the territory. Agents and soldiers from the Czechoslovak army in exile, trained in Great Britain, were sent back into occupied Europe. From 1941 onwards, groups were deployed with specific tasks: to establish contact with resistance at home, to maintain communication with the government in exile in London, and to prepare acts of sabotage.
Among these groups was Silver A, which operated primarily in Eastern Bohemia.
The effectiveness of such groups depended heavily on communication. The radio transmitter Libuše, operated by Silver A, became a crucial link between the Protectorate and London, transmitting information about German movements, industrial production, and political conditions, and receiving instructions from abroad. The transmitter was operated by Josef Potůček, a 22-year-old corporal who had been dropped by parachute near Poděbrady on the night of 28 December 1941, together with the commander of the group, Alfred Bartoš.
On 15 January 1942, Potůček established two-way contact with the Czechoslovak station in Britain, and for the months that followed his set was the only transmitter in the Protectorate maintaining a permanent connection with the leadership abroad. Maintaining this connection required secrecy, mobility, and the cooperation of local civilians willing to risk their lives. German direction-finding units searched the region continuously, and the transmitter was moved between hiding places.
Potůček was employed at the Hluboká quarry under false documents issued in the name of Alois Tolar. He transmitted from Bohdanec, from Pardubice, and from Netetice. From April 1942, the transmitter was kept in the mill of the miller Jindřich Švanda.
In the region around the city of Pardubice, about 100 kilometers east of Prague, such support was found among members of the resistance network, including individuals connected to the settlement of Ležáky, which consisted of nine buildings along a stream with a stone quarry above them and was home to 54 people.
The situation changed dramatically on 27 May 1942, when Czechoslovak agents carried out the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the acting Reich Protector and one of the central figures of the Nazi security system. Heydrich had been instrumental in consolidating German control over the Protectorate and in implementing policies of repression and terror. He died of his wounds on 4 June.
His death was a significant blow to the German administration, but it also triggered an immediate and severe response.
Thousands of people were arrested, interrogated, and hundreds were executed. Entire resistance networks were dismantled through a combination of surveillance, informants, and torture. On 10 June 1942, the village of Lidice was destroyed in a highly publicized act of reprisal.
Although its inhabitants had no connection to the assassination, the village was chosen as an example. The men were shot, the women deported to concentration camps, and the children subjected to racial selection, with many later killed in gas vans at the Chelmno extermination camp in German-occupied Poland.
The destruction of Lidice was intended to send a clear message, but it did not end the search for those connected to the resistance. A decisive turning point came on 16 June when one of the Czechoslovak agents, Karel Čurda, voluntarily reported himself to the Gestapo in Prague. In exchange for promises of clemency and financial reward, he provided detailed information about resistance networks and contacts.
Among the areas affected by his testimony was the Pardubice region, where the Silver A group operated.
This betrayal allowed the German authorities to identify and arrest members of the local network. The warning reached Ležáky on 17 June when a man arrived at the mill by bicycle to inform Potůček and the families of Švanda and Štulík of what was coming. Before dawn on the following morning, the transmitter Libuše was carried out of the valley by car, and Potůček moved north toward Červený Kostelec.
On 20 June, the first arrests were carried out in the vicinity of Ležáky. The manager of the nearby quarry was taken into custody, and on the following day the miller Jindřich Švanda, whose mill stood close to the settlement, was arrested as well. Both men were subjected to interrogation and torture, and under these conditions the existence of the transmitter Libuše and its location became known to the German security services.
On 21 June, the commander of Silver A, Alfred Bartoš, was surrounded in Pardubice and shot himself. He died the following day. The connection between the resistance and Ležáky was established, and the decision to destroy the settlement followed quickly.
At the time this decision was taken, the transmitter was no longer in Ležáky. It had been removed six days earlier.
On 24 June 1942, in the early afternoon, German forces moved to carry out the operation. One hundred fifty men from the Pardubice company of the 20th Reserve Police Regiment Böhmen, acting under the direction of the Gestapo and supported by SS personnel, surrounded Ležáky. To ensure that the cordon was complete, around 30 Czech gendarmes were deployed to form an outer ring.
The inhabitants of Ležáky were gathered together along with individuals who happened to be in the area at the time. Even children who were attending school in a nearby town were brought back under guard. The operation was methodical.
Names were checked, people counted, and no distinction was made between those directly involved in resistance and those who were not. The entire community was treated as collectively responsible.
The detainees were transported to Pardubice, to a local villa known as Zámeček, which had become a central site for executions in the area. On the evening of 24 June, after 9:00, all 33 adult inhabitants of Ležáky, 15 men and 18 women, were shot. Their bodies were transported to the crematorium in Pardubice and burned.
In the days that followed, further inhabitants who had been absent on 24 June were traced and killed, together with more than 40 people who had assisted the parachutists. In total, 51 inhabitants of Ležáky did not survive.
At the same time, the physical destruction of Ležáky was carried out with equal precision. The houses were first looted, valuables and livestock removed, and then the buildings were set on fire. By late afternoon on 24 June 1942, flames spread through the settlement, consuming wooden structures and reducing them to ashes.
The mill, the houses, and all signs of daily life were gone within hours. Two days later, a German press release announced the outcome.
In the months that followed, even the ruins were removed. In late 1943, 65 prisoners from Nazi labor camps were brought to the valley. The foundations were pulled up and the site was leveled.
The settlement ceased to exist not only in reality, but also in the physical landscape.
The fate of the children from Ležáky followed the logic of Nazi racial policy. Thirteen children were taken from the settlement and transported from Pardubice to Prague and then to Wuj in German-occupied Poland, where they were held in a textile factory and subjected to selection. Two of the children, the sisters Jarmila and Marie Štulíková, aged one and two and a half, were deemed suitable for Germanization and placed with a German family.
The remaining 11 were handed over to the Gestapo and killed in gas vans at the Chelmno extermination camp, in the same way as the children from the village of Lidice. Both sisters were located after the war and returned to Czechoslovakia in 1946.
One member of Silver A remained at liberty for eight more days. On 30 June, the Gestapo surrounded the hamlet of Končiny, where Josef Potůček was sheltering with a farming family. He fought his way out of the encirclement and lost the transmitter permanently.
Exhausted and pursued for three days by the Gestapo and by Protectorate Gendarmerie, he fell asleep in a small wood between the villages of Třešť and Rosice. On 20 July 1942, a Czech gendarme found him there and shot him while he slept.
While the victims could never be brought back, justice eventually caught up with those who had planned the destruction of the settlement and the murder of its inhabitants. Some paid for their crimes with their own lives even during the Second World War, including Gerhard Klages, the Gestapo commander in Pardubice, who organized the destruction of Ležáky. For this operation, he was promoted to the rank of Hauptsturmführer on 1 September 1942.
He died on 15 October 1944 during the fighting in Budapest, Hungary, and a further promotion, signed in November of that year, was awarded to a man who was already dead.
A similar fate likely befell Hans Ulrich Geschke, head of the Prague Gestapo, who probably also died during the fighting in Budapest, although he was not officially declared dead until 1959. Concerns remain that he may have managed to change his identity and evade justice. However, this certainly did not happen after the war to those who were brought before Czechoslovak courts.
Such was the case of Hubert Hanowski, a member of the Gestapo and the SS, who actively participated in the persecution of members of the Silver A parachute unit and in the sustained interrogation of residents of Ležáky. He was sentenced to death for his crimes against Czechoslovak citizens and was executed on 10 December 1946. Two officers of the same Pardubice office were executed within the same month.
Karl Hermann Frank, who orchestrated the terror against the Czech population during the existence of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was captured by American troops and extradited relatively quickly to Czechoslovakia, where he was to be prosecuted for his crimes. In front of the Czechoslovak court, he was found guilty of war crimes and held responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in the Protectorate.
Frank attempted to defend himself by claiming that his work was primarily for the welfare of the German nation, that he was not driven by hatred toward the Czech people, and that he had no knowledge of the true cruelty of the consequences of his decisions. This was a lie. On 21 May 1946, the verdict was handed down.
The reading of the judgment and its reasoning lasted until the following day, and Karl Hermann Frank was sentenced to death by hanging. Three hours after the reading of the judgment’s reasoning was completed, and after all requests for clemency had been rejected, the execution took place on 22 May 1946 in the courtyard of Pankrác Prison in Prague, before the eyes of 5,000 citizens, including journalists and photographers.
Kurt Daluege, the acting Reich Protector who succeeded Reinhard Heydrich and participated in the terror that unfolded in the Protectorate after Heydrich’s death, also stood before the Czechoslovak court. Throughout his trial, Daluege was unrepentant, claiming he was only following Hitler’s orders and had a clear conscience. He was convicted of all charges and sentenced to death on 23 October 1946.
Daluege was hanged in Pankrác Prison on 24 October 1946. Both former high-ranking Nazis were buried in an unmarked grave at the Ďáblice Cemetery in Prague.
In the years that followed, Ležáky was not rebuilt. Instead, the site was transformed into a place of memory. Stone monuments were erected on the foundations of each house that had stood there, one for every family, and the entire area was recognized as a national cultural monument.
Each year on 24 June, the names of the victims are read aloud on the ground where the settlement used to be, ensuring that the crime committed there is never forgotten and that the justice that eventually followed remains part of the historical record.