The house used to belong to Anna Pollertová (1899–1945), daughter of Josef Baum, the last mayor of the National Czech-Jewish Unity Movement in Vinohrady. She was very active in the women's movement before the war; after the occupation she became part of the PVVZ, a leftist but non-Communist resistance group.
As an owner of the house, she hid resistance fighters and helped organize escapes abroad. There was also an illegal mimeograph in the house. Her brother, RNDr. Jiří Baum, assisted the PVVZ with technology enabling the transfer of information to London and performing photographic work. He also functioned as messenger and provided illegal hiding places. Another PVVZ member, MUDr. Viktor Kaufmann, had his medical practice and flat in Anna Pollertová's house at the beginning of the occupation. Professor Jiřina Picková lived in the attic flat, and Dr. Josef Fischer, also a PVVZ member and brother of the writer Otokar Fischer, hid there for a short time too. Anna Pollertová received considerable funds from her Jewish friends, which otherwise would have been confiscated as Jewish property. With this money, the Czech anti-Nazi resistance movement financed escapes, support of families of arrestees, forged documents, spare parts for radio transmitters, weapons and rental fees for hiding places.
During a major roundup of PVVZ members in October 1941, Pollertová, Kaufmann, Bondy and Fischer were arrested. They were executed in January 1945.
RNDr. Jiří Baum was declared an “Honorary Aryan” by the Protectorate government, becoming No. 20 on a list of exemptions from anti-Jewish legislation. This list became a worthless piece of paper after Reinhard Heydrich ́s arrival in Prague. Baum was protected from deportation by his marriage to Růžena Baumová, who was an “Aryan“ according to racist laws. But in June 1943, a Czech neighbour denounced him. Jiří Baum was arrested, interrogated by the police, imprisoned and deported to a concentration camp on the territory of the former Warsaw ghetto, where he disappeared without a trace.
The children of Anna Pollertová lived with their grandparents in Londýnská street till February 1942, when the grandparents were deported to Terezin and from there to the death camp Treblinka. Their aunt Josefa was deported from the same address in April and murdered in the ghetto of Izbica. Fifteen-year-old Herbert and seventeen-year-old Irena Pollertová were deported to Terezin in July 1942.