Until September, visitors to the National Galleries of Scotland will have a rare opportunity to see one of its most prized paintings.
The work Zrání by Oskar Kokoschka, an Austrian citizen of Czech descent, spends most of its time either in storage or travelling around the world.
To mark the end of the Second World War, however, it will be display until September, a mark of the remarkable connection between Scotland and the Czechoslovak resistance.
Read More:
-
Scottish delegation to Italy to honour Arbroath-born partisan killed fighting fascism
-
Czech mate: The friend of Scotland who created Eastern Europe's first Highland games
-
The slice of Scotland in the heart of Prague bringing whisky to beer lovers
The painting has been given the title 'High Summer' by the National Galleries, its Czech name being difficult to translate into English.
The closest translation would likely be "maturation" or "ripening", but could also be "adolescence" or refer to the period before a harvest.
Kokoschka was an impressionist, inspired chiefly by Vincent van Gogh, and after the anschluss, in which Austria was absorbed into the Third Reich, his work was dubbed "degenerate" by the Nazis.
What precisely that meant was and remains hard to define, but in practice it referred to anything deemed Jewish or communist - Kokoschka was neither, as it happens.
He was nevertheless dubbed "the most degenerate of the degenerates", and was one of 18 artists listed on the Erfassung führender Männer der Systemzeit, an intelligence operation targeted at perceived enemies of the state.
In 1934 he fled to Prague, where he met his wife, Olda Palkovská, founded an anti-Nazi art group and acquired Czechoslovak citizenship.
In 1938 Britain, France, Italy and Germany signed the Munich Agreement - the Czechs call it the 'Munich Betrayal' - which allowed Adolf Hitler to seize the Sudetenland and Kokoschka was forced to flee again.
He and his wife escaped to Britain with just £5 and a small canvas - a work in progress which would eventually become Zrání.
It was not he, perhaps on a visit to Wester Ross, who donated the painting but rather the Czechoslovak government in exile, who gifted it to Scotland in gratitude for the nation's contribution to the resistance.
Between 1941 and 1943, Czech and Slovak special operations soldiers were trained in Arisaig.
Exiled from their homeland, the troops were understandably homesick and would spend their free time in Edinburgh at a house on Lauder Road set up by Dr Lumír Soukup to cater to exiles.
The former Church of Scotland building had 35 beds, a record player with Czech and Slovak records, as well as books, newspapers and board games in both languages.
Dubbed the Scottish-Czechoslovak House, it was officially opened by President in exile Edvard Benes in 1941.
A Scotsman report on his visit noted: "Dr Benes comes as the chosen representative of a people who temperamentally have much in common with the Scots.
"They are marked by a dogged tenacity and a determination of purpose; by a tendency to abhor social and economic inequality."
Even by the standards of the Third Reich, Heydrich was a remarkably callous figure.
Dubbed 'The Man with the Iron Heart' by Adolf Hitler, he was one of the organisers of the kristallnacht pogrom, and arguably the key figure in the implementation of the 'Final Solution' - he chaired the Wansee Conference at which senior Nazi figures agreed on their plans to massacre the Jews of Europe.
He was appointed Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia in September of 1941 with a pledge to "Germanise the Czech vermin". Those deemed of sufficient racial purity would be re-educated, while anyone deemed of impure blood would be killed or displaced.
By February of 1942 he'd had up to 500 people summarily executed, earning his 'Butcher' sobriquet, and another 5,000 sent to Mauthausen concentration camp.
The plan to assassinate him, dubbed Operation Anthropoid, was devised by the government in exile in late 1941, and on 29 December, Kubiš, a Czech, and Gabčík, a Slovak, were parachuted behind enemy lines by an RAF bomber.
The plan had been for them to land close to Plzen but a miscalculation saw the soldiers dropped at Nehvizdy, near Prague.
Gabčík injured his leg during the jump, with the pair sheltering in the hut of gardner Antonín Sedláček before making contact with the resistance in Prague.
Over the following months a small band drew up their plans for the assassination.
Heydrich had established his headquarters at Prague Castle and was driven there every morning, usually in an open topped car, with his driver forced to slow down significantly on the corner of Kirchmayerova and Holešovičkách.
On the morning of May 27, Gabčík and Kubiš cycled to the location, the former with the weapon under his coat. Just after 10.30 Heydrich, in an open-topped Mercedes, approached the corner, the presence of a number 14 tram meaning his driver had to slow almost to walking pace.
Gabčík dropped his coat, pulled out the gun, took aim and pulled the trigger... and heard a click. It had jammed. Operation Anthropoid might have failed there and then, but rather than being driven off Heydrich ordered his driver to stop and drew his Luger.
Kubiš, to that point unseen by the Germans, threw an improvised bomb at the car, badly wounding Heydrich and thoroughly alarming the tram passengers.
The assassins separated and managed to escape down Prague's narrow side streets while the Reich Protector was rushed to hospital, where he would die several days later.
The hunt for his assailants began immediately, with a reward of two million marks offered for their capture.
The people of Prague were confined to their homes between 9pm and 6am on pain of death, and the Nazi-controlled Prague Radio warned: “Whoever hides the criminals or gives them any help, or has any knowledge of their identity or description of their appearance and does not inform the authorities, will be shot along with his whole family.”
Up to 5,000 Czechs were killed in the reprisals which continued until Karel Čurda, a fellow resistance member, betrayed Gabčík and Kubiš.
Though he did not know where the assassins were hiding he informed the Germans of several safe houses, including that of the Moravec family in Žižkov.
Their flat was raided at dawn on 17 June. Alois Moravec was arrested, and his wife Marie Moravcová killed herself with a cyanide pill in the toilet.
One of their sons, 17-year-old Vlastimil, was outside of the city at the time and was summoned back by an urgent telegram. He was arrested and tortured by the gestapo, including being shown the severed head of his mother.
The teenager resisted for hours but just before midnight he cracked: Gabčík and Kubiš, along with other members of the resistance, were hiding in the crypt of the St. Cyril and Methodius Church.
A two-hour gun battle ensued, with Kubiš, Adolf Opálka and Josef Bublík killed trying to hold off the SS in the loft with nothing more than pistols.
Gabčík, along with Josef Valčík, Jaroslav Švarc and Jan Hrubý, were besieged in the crypt, the SS pumping in water and throwing tear gas grenades.
Čurda, the informant, urged them to surrender, saying he had not been harmed and nor would they be. "We are Czechs, we will never surrender!", came the reply.
After more than seven hours the surviving fighters were running out of ammunition. Rather than be captured, they shot themselves in the crypt.
Fearing reprisals for his flock the church bishop, Matěj Pavlík, took the blame for sheltering the fighters. He and three others were shot, as were Alois and Vlastimil Moravec.
Čurda's betrayal uncovered the whole resistance network in Prague, with other members either executed or taking their own lives. After being captured and tried following the war he is alleged to have said in court, "I think you would have done the same for one million marks". He was hanged in 1947.
Today the crypt serves as both a free museum and a memorial, and the resistance is commemorated in Scotland, too.
In 2009 a stone tribute to the Czech and Slovak agents was erected in Arisaig. It was designated a war grave, with the fate of most of those who trained there unknown after they were parachuted behind enemy lines.
The former Scottish-Czechoslovak house was given a memorial plaque in 2022, with even its current owners unaware of its history until then.
And, of course, there's the small gifted painting hanging in the National Galleries.
Share