No, this wasn't a dollhouse. Hidden from public view on Capuchin Street in Hradčany is a small building with a dark past, a place of cruel interrogations and great heroism. The little house, as the building was called, which had been a prison since the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was used by the Gestapo during the Second World War.
However, Domeček gained its greatest "notoriety" after World War II, when, under the administration of the Ministry of National Defence, it turned into the worst torture chamber of the communist regime by 1952. Hundreds of political prisoners, including Heliodor Píky, Karel Kutlvašr, Jaromír Nechanský, Prokop Drtina, elite RAF pilots and hockey players were imprisoned and interrogated here, often under inhumane conditions.
This place and its history will be commemorated in the upcoming permanent exhibition of the Museum of Memory of the 20th Century.
We invite you to the Václav Havel Library on 23 February at 19:00 for a debate on cruel interrogation methods and the fate of perpetrators and their victims. The speakers will be historian Prokop Tomek and Markéta Bártová, author of the forthcoming book about the Hradčany House, moderated by Jan Kalous.