Heydrich, Reinhard

Rein­hard Hey­drich (1904−1942) – one of the main orga­niz­ers of the geno­cide of Jews and Roma, founder and head of the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice (Sicher­heits­di­enst) and the Reich Secu­ri­ty Office (RSHA). From Sep­tem­ber 1941, when he became act­ing Reich Pro­tec­tor, he pro­mot­ed the plan to Ger­man­ise the pop­u­la­tion of Bohemia and Moravia. He died after an assas­si­na­tion attempt by Czechoslo­vak para­troop­ers on 27 May 1942 as part of Oper­a­tion Anthro­poid, organ­ised by the gov­ern­ment-in-exile in Lon­don. In response to the assas­si­na­tion, the Nazis wiped out Lidice and Ležáky, arrest­ed and exe­cut­ed sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple and took oth­ers to con­cen­tra­tion camps.