Ďáblice cemetery ( cs, Ďáblický hřbitov) is a graveyard in Ďáblice municipal district,

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

. The entrance pavilions were designed by

Vlastislav Hofman Vlastislav Hofman (6 February 1884 – 28 August 1964) was an artist and architect who lived and worked first in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later in Czechoslovakia. Though he was a painter, set designer, graphic artist, furniture designe ...

. The cemetery was opened in 1914 and over 20,000 registered

grave A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as grav ...

s are located here. As well as single and family graves there are about 70

mass grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution, although an exact ...

s containing bodies of over 14,000 people in total. Since 1943, Czech people executed by Nazis or killed while fighting Nazis were buried there; since 1945 executed Nazi criminals and since 1948 people who were executed or died in communist prisons. In 2014 the body of P. Josef Toufar was identified and exhumed from one of the mass graves in the course of his

beatification Beatification (from Latin ''beatus'', "blessed" and ''facere'', "to make”) is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a deceased person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in their nam ...

. There is serious intention to declare this part of the cemetery a national monument. This initiative is hampered by the objection that, apart from thousands of the victims of Nazism and hundreds of the victims of communism, the mass graves also contain thousands of bodies or body parts of unknown people who died in Prague hospitals and were subsequently used for pathological or academic

autopsies An autopsy (post-mortem examination, obduction, necropsy, or autopsia cadaverum) is a surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse by dissection to determine the cause, mode, and manner of death or to evaluate any d ...

. The bodies of

Jan Kubiš Jan Kubiš (24 June 1913 – 18 June 1942) was a Czech soldier, one of a team of Czechoslovak British-trained paratroopers sent to eliminate acting Reichsprotektor (Realm-Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydri ...

and

Jozef Gabčík Jozef Gabčík (; 8 April 1912 – 18 June 1942) was a Slovak soldier in the Czechoslovak Army involved in the Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of acting ''Reichsprotektor'' (Imperial-Protector) of Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, ...

, the assassins of

Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...

in 1942, were secretly buried in a mass grave in this cemetery after being killed by Nazi German troops. In 2014 there were calls for their remains to be removed from the cemetery and be given a dignified burial fitting "the heroes of anti-Nazi resistance". Also buried in an anonymous pit at Ďáblice is Nazi war criminal

Karl Hermann Frank Karl Hermann Frank (24 January 1898 – 22 May 1946) was a prominent Sudeten German Nazi official in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia prior to and during World War II. Attaining the rank of '' Obergruppenführer'', he was in command of th ...

, buried after his hanging in 1946.

References

External links

* Cemeteries in Prague 20th-century establishments in Bohemia 1914 establishments in Austria-Hungary {{Europe-cemetery-stub