BH-M Anniversary of Reinhard Heydrich's Death (28th May 1943):

Here I have a stamp from the bohemia-moravia protectorate, that being the former regions of Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia. Depicted is the 'Deputy Protector' of the regions protectorate; Reinhard Heydrich, alongside an SS symbol. Heydrich was a notorious Nazi and high ranking member of the SS that is often given the title of 'principal architect of the holocaust'. He was directly responsible for the Einsatzgruppen, a sadistic task force that murdered over 2 million people by mass shooting and gassing, including 1.3 million Jews. Heydrich was thankfully mortally wounded in Prague when a team of Czech and Slovak soldiers threw an anti-tank mine at his car as it stopped, severely injuring and later killing him. The Nazis, in what they thought was an act of retaliation, then razed the villages of Lidice and Lezaky resulting in the mass-murder or exile of almost all of it's civilians. This brutal retaliation was made on the basis of bad intel as the task force was actually sent by the Czechoslovak goverment in-exile with it's members being trained by the British Special Operations Executive.

This example is mint never hinged and has a face value of 60 + 440 Bohemian and Moravian Haler, it is of violet black colour. In the top left corner is of course the name Reinhard Heydrich and below that both the date of his birth and death with this stamp being issued by the Nazis to commemorate and honour the latter. Just over a million of these stamps were printed with only a thousand being issued on special sheets, most of which were handed out on the day of his funeral and are thus exceedingly rare. The singular stamp such as this one is catalog code Michel DE-BM 131.