USM Rare books & MIlitaria
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NAZI SS REWARD POSTER - HEYDRICH ASSASSINATION
SS and Police General Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich
AN ABSOLUTELY AUTHENTIC
NAZI SS REWARD POSTER
FOR MIROSLAV VALCIK,
ONE OF THE 4 ASSASSINS OF
DEPUTY REICHSPROTEKTOR,
GERMAN SS AND POLICE
GENERAL REINHARD TRISTAN
EUGEN HEYDRICH
SS Heydrich reward poster
Josef “Miroslav” Valcik as he appeared in 1941 while being trained by the British SOE in England.
Josef “Miroslav” Vlacik
When Nazi Deputy Reichsprotector, German SS and Police General Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was murdered in Praha (Prag, Prague) at the end of May 1942, all Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo or State Secret Police) agents in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were mobilized in the search for his assassins. Everyone from Hitler and the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, down to SS Generals Frank and Daluege were consumed with the immediate need to find the murderers.

British trained Operation Anthropoid Czechoslovakian sabotage agents Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubis, Operation Silver A agent Josef Valcik and Operation Out Distance agent Adolf Opalka had carried out the attempt on Heydrich’s life. Gabcik and Kubis had lived for a time in the late winter of 1941/42 in the safehouse of “Aunt Marie” Moravec. They were joined there in February 1942 by Josef Valcik.
Heydrich SS Mercedes-Benz
On the sunny morning of 27 May 1942, Gabcik, Kubis, Valcik and Opalka waited on a street corner in the Praha suburb of Kobilisi for the approach of Heydrich’s car. At 10:30 Valcik signaled the others with a mirror that Heydrich’s SS Mercedes-Benz car was approaching. Gabcik’s Sten gun misfired so Kubis tossed the grenade at the open car that was responsible for ending 38 year old Reinhard Heydrich’s life.
SS-Standartenführer Dr. Hans Ulrich Geschke, Chief of the Prague Gestapo
Gestapo response was swift and heavy-handed. A curfew and a state-of-siege was imposed while a house-to-house sweep of the surrounded city was undertaken. Wanted posters were printed and distributed. All four of Heydrich’s assassins went underground, eventually secreting themselves in the burial niches in the crypt beneath the Orthodox Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius on Resslova Street.
THE POSTER WE OFFER HERE IS AN EXTREMELY RARE AUTHENTIC EXAMPLE THAT WAS ACTUALLY POSTED IN PRAHA IN MAY 1942. IT WAS SENT BACK HOME TO ENNS, GERMANY BY A NAZI POLICEMAN STATIONED IN PRAHA. WE BOUGHT IT IN ENNS.
The rest of the story, is as they say, history. All the British trained Czechoslovakian sabotage agents in the church crypt committed suicide at the last moment, as a Waffen-SS task force closed in on them on 18 June 1942. None was taken alive.

The original poster we offer here is a priceless piece of the history of the demise of one of the most powerful and fascinating men in Europe - Acting Reichsprotector Reinhard Heydrich. Some say that he would have been the successor to Adolf Hitler if things had gone differently for the Nazis.
Josef “Miroslav” Vlacik
The poster measures about 12-1/2 x 18-1/2 inches and is printed on newsprint paper. It was produced by the Prag Gestapo and offers 100,000 Crowns reward for the capture of the man shown and described on the poster, Josef “Miroslav” Valcik. The text on the poster appears in both German and Czech languages, is dated 28 May 1942 and is over the name of SS-Standartenführer Dr. Hans Ulrich Geschke, Chief of the Prague Gestapo (photo above). The photo at the right shows Valcik's corpse after he killed himself.

This poster is extremely rare. There is no picture of it in the recent two-volume set of books on Heydrich published by Ulric of England, or in the other English language publications we have searched. It is depicted in full in the best book on the subject, the Czech book “NEKOMU ZIVOT, NEKOMU SMRT” by Jaroslav Cvancara. The poster as folded twice but is in excellent condition.
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