File:JUDr.Josef.Ruzicka.(1889-1942).Stolperstein.Prague.gif

English: JUDr. Josef Růžička (* July 13, 1889 - May 23, 1942) Before World War II, he owned the diamond cutting shop in Turnov and owned several properties. From 1932 he also served as Honorary Consul of the Republic of Panama with the right to issue visas. During the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, he was involved in anti-German activities (he issued Panamanian visas to Czechoslovak Jews to leave the Protectorate and thus allowed them to save their lives from Nazi persecution). (He also issued visas to Jews from the Slovak Republic, Austria and Poland. He helped even at least eighty German anti-fascists persecuted for political reasons to escape to exile.) In 1996, the handwritten "Book of Emigration Visas to Panama from 1929 to 1939" was randomly found. At first glance, the records showed a discrepancy: Between 1929 and 1937, only nine visas were issued, whereas from 1938 to 1939 it was about 1,500 visas issued mainly to persons with Jewish names and nationalities (Czech, Polish, Austrian and German Jews). JUDr. Josef Růžička, however, was deconspired by a Gestapo member who lived probably in the neighborhood of his house. On October 4, 1941, Růžička was arrested in his house by the Gestapo and first deported to the Gestapo prison in the Small Fortress in Terezin for three months and then imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp. President Emil Hácha's intervention was not valid. Josef Růžička did not survive the Second World War. On 23 May 1942 he was assassinated in Mauthausen KT (killed to death by a guard on the stairs to the quarry). Its fate is reminiscent of the stone of the disappeared (stolperstein) installed in the pavement in front of the Swedish Embassy in Prague at the address: Úvoz 156/13, Prague 1-Hradčany, Czech Republic.