Marie Schmolková's house has been turned into a place of asylum. A WIZO shelter was set up there for women who did not want to live in overcrowded camps and dormitories with male refugees.
When, at 8 p.m. on March 14, 1939, leading Czech Zionists gathered at the Wilson Station to say goodbye to friends leaving into emigration, Schmolková was among them. Both Max Brod and Felix Weltsch tried to persuade her to emigrate, she refused as she did many times before. When the next morning she received a telephone call from a co-worker in the Refugee Committee telling her that the Gestapo was in the offices, that they had arrested Hanna Steiner and that Marie must disappear immediately, she merely stated: "You are the seventh person to telephone me since four in the morning. I certainly have no plans to do anything of the sort."
In a few hours, Schmolková was already intervenening at various embassies for the most endangered refugees from Germany, then burned all the documents that remained in Kamzikova street that must not have fallen into the hands of the occupiers. Then she went to the Gestapo, demanding the release of Hanna Steiner. She was immediately arrested and imprisoned in Pankrác prison.
She spent two months in prison, and probably would have died there as a diabetic without proper treatment had it not been for the intervention of Protectorate ministers and friends from the women's movement, especially Františka Plamínková.
Business card of Marie Schmolková.
Library of the Jewish Museum in Prague