Kobylisy Shooting Range
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Kobylisy Shooting Range (Czech: Kobyliská střelnice) is a former military shooting range located in Kobylisy, a northern suburb of Prague, Czech Republic.
The shooting range was established in 1889-1891, on a site that was at the time far outside the city, as a training facility for the Austro-Hungarian (and, later, Czechoslovak) army. During the Nazi occupation it was used for mass executions as part of retaliatory measures against the Czech people after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942. About 550 Czech patriots of every social rank lost their lives here, most of them between May 30 and July 3, 1942, when executions took place almost every day. The bodies of the executed were subsequently incinerated in Strašnice crematorium.
A list of people shot at Kobylisy includes:
- Jan Auerhan, director of the State Bureau of Statistics
- Gen. Alois Eliáš, prime minister
- Lt. Col. Josef Mašín soldier, member of the Three Kings resistance group
- Matěj Pavlík-Gorazd, bishop of the Czechoslovak Orthodox Church, later canonised as saint Gorazd
- Františka Plamínková, senator, feminist
- Evžen Rošický, journalist, athlete
- Vladislav Vančura, physician, writer and film director
- 26 citizens of Lidice (members of the Horák and Stříbrný families arrested before the extermination of the village, and men who were away at work that night)
The site was converted to a memorial after WWII, and its current dimensions date to the 1970s when the large paneláks (Communist-era tower blocks) of a new housing estate encroached upon it. Kobylisy Shooting Range has had the status of national cultural monument since 1978. Today it is freely accessible and is within ten minutes' walk of the Kobylisy or Ládví metro stations.
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