Silver medal National Heroes - Irena Bernášková proof

Silver medal National Heroes - Irena Bernášková proof

Stock state
Sold out
Date of issue
June 2021
Mintage
1000 pcs

The product can also be purchased directly in the stores of the Czech Mint

A discount voucher cannot be applied to the product.

National Heroes

The series National Heroes introduces the third woman who sacrificed herself for a higher good. The silver medal of the Czech Mint comemmorates the resistance fighter Irena Bernášková.

Czechoslovakia was to collapse after the Munich Agreement. At that time,
Irena Bernášková did not hesitate to lend a helping hand to people who fled the border, and she signed up as a sister of the Red Cross. She decided to do even more and joined the anti-Nazi resistance after the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Alongside her father - painter and graphic artist Vojtěch Preissig - she became a key figure in the editorial office that published the illegal magazine V boj. This resistance resistance periodical, which the Nazis tried to destroy several times, was one of the few objective sources of information in the occupied country, but it also went far abroad. Inka was its editor, publisher, printer, administrator, expeditor and collector. Although she was intensively searched by the Gestapo, she did not give up and managed to publish dozens of issues of the magazine. In the end, however, she was caught. During the interrogations, she took all the blame, and saved a number of other resistance fighters. She pretended not to be in contact with her family, and even before she was arrested, she even divorced her beloved husband to protect him. Unfortunately, this did not help and Inka's husband and father were murdered in concentration camps. Inka, who stated in her closing remarks that she hopes for the defeat of evil and believes in the renewal of the Czechoslovak Republic, was the first Czech woman to be sentenced to death by the Nazis. The sentence was carried out by guillotine in the Berlin prison Plötzensee…

The reverse side of the medal, which is the work of
academic sculptor Jiří Dostál, presents a sad female portrait supplemented with an inscription IRENA BERNÁŠKOVÁ 7. 2. 1904 PRAHA. The horizontal line in the neck area symbolizes the way in which the resistance fighter was killed. The inscription POPRAVENA GILOTINOU 26. 8. 1942 BERLÍN (EXECUTED BY A GUILOTINE on August 26, 1942, BERLIN), draws attention to the same. The reverse side is then dedicated to the magazine V boj. The relief is inspired by the 50th issue from 1940, the cover of which with the Czechoslovakian lion, which draws the swastika, was drawn by Vojtěch Preissig.

An integral part of the medal is a
spectacular packaging in the form of a book that contains a treatise written by the historian PhDr. Petr Koura, Ph.D. Remember that you can store your collection of National Heroes in a practical collector's box.

Specifications

Collectors set
Code
31344-721
Issuer
Czech mint
Author of the obverse
ak. soch. Jiří Dostál
Author of the reverse
ak. soch. Jiří Dostál
Numbered issue
No
Certificate
No
Fineness
999 / 1000
Weight
31.1 g
Diameter
37 mm
Packaging
Blister
Capsule
Yes
Czech Mint
Loading...