A Guide to Prague under the Protectorate #8

Otto Lev Stanovský, an archdiocesan canon at St. Vitus Cathedral, lived in this house. As a functionary of the National Partnership party (Národní souručenství) and as chairman of the Catholic organization Charita, he helped many people persecuted by the Nazis. In June 1942 Jan Sonnenvend approached him in the office of the National Aid organization (Národní pomoc) on Na Příkopě Street and asked him to hide in a Catholic church or monastery the Czech parachutists who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich. Otto Lev Stanovský declined, but the Gestapo arrested him anyway at 5 in the morning on July 3, 1942 in this apartment. He was sentenced to death and imprisoned in Terezín and in Berlin’s Plötzensee prison. After half a year he was granted a reprieve, and his sentence was changed to 8 years in prison. He was imprisoned in Staubingen and survived until the end of the occupation, albeit in ill health. His health had deteriorated so much in prison that he died as a result on December 5, 1945.