In Vysočany in the Prague 9 district, housing developments grow like mushrooms after the rain. The days of a purely working class environment are long gone. Contemporary Vysočany offers modern living with gardens and public facilities. One of the emerging development projects is the Emil Kolben sub-district which also asked for a new road name. The former is named after a prominent Pechman resistance family.

“This is another street that was just made, it needs to be named because it’s a new house. We tried to name it in this area, because a lot of resistance fighters live and work here – specifically, not Pechman, they’re from Michle, to name it after the people who helped paratroopers to eliminate Reinhard Heydrich,” said Adam Vážanský – deputy mayor of Prague 9.

The Pechmans were not only deeply involved in the falconry movement, for example by building a new falconry in Michli, but at the same time provided significant support to the paratroopers in Operation Anthropoid, which took heavy casualties in the form of Nazi retaliation.

“It was material support or accommodation, they found them clothes or ID cards, workbooks and so on. The retaliation was quite cruel. Miroslav Pechman was poisoned during an arrest on October 5, and Germany levied taxes on that family member, so he arrested his whole family, ” says Vlastislav Janík – historian.

Marie’s wife and son Jaroslav were murdered in the Mauthausen concentration camp in January 1943. Milena’s only daughter survived. She later met and married Mr. Miloslav Hrubý, who came to remember her and the Pechman family on the occasion of naming the street.

“They are very nice people. He is the mayor of Sokol and I almost always go there. There I met their daughter Milena and we were married for 57 years,” says Miloslav Hrubý – husband of Milena Pechmanová.

Prague District 9, the Czechoslovak legionary community, Rota Nazdar and Initiative A participated in the event, which resulted in a new road opening ceremony.

“We were happy when we named the first two roads 4 years ago and this is the sixth. We try to tell residents of the roads that have just immigrated from the start what the names of the roads are,” said Karel Polata – Initiative A .

Along with Pechmanových Street, the emerging Emil Kolben District will get four more street names. And after the Hejl family, Oktábc, Fafk and Terezia Kaliberová. They were all deeply involved in the war against the Third Reich and they all paid for it with their lives.