Stanislav Mareš 1888 - 1945

Born 11.11.1888 in Litovel
Died 8.4.1945 in Mauthausen

Biography

Stanislav Mareš attended the secondary modern and then grammar school in his home town of Litovel, where he passed his school leaving exam in 1908. He then began work in the town as a court clerk. Later he also worked as a court clerk in Olomouc, Vsetín and Uherský Brod. In 1913 he was sent to Sarajevo for a year to join the staff of the imperial-royal political administration; he was also there when the First World War broke out. Until 1918 he fought in the army of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and afterwards joined the Czechoslovakian army as a captain. From 1920 to 1925 he worked in the general finance office. After that he was pensioned off as an invalid. In 1932 he went to Bratislava as a supporter of the Czechoslovakian Social Democratic Party, where he assumed the role as secretary of the Social Democratic Union of Public Employees.

After the break-up of Czechoslovakia and the founding of the Slovak State in March 1939, he immediately became active in the illegal resistance, in particular he helped to build up a network of members to secure illegal escape routes for fellow countrymen from Bohemia and Moravia, but also from Slovakia, via the so-called southern route across Hungary and Yugoslavia to France and Great Britain. But as early as September 1939, during an attempt to leave the country, he was caught out by agents provocateurs and arrested by members of the Slovakian Interior Ministry and the German Security Service (SD). In September 1940 he was sentenced to seven years’ and four months’ imprisonment. He was held in Bratislava until 2 February 1945 but, on the orders of the German Security Police (SiPo) and the Security Service (SD), on 5 February 1945 he was deported on the second transport to leave Bratislava to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where he died in April 1945.

Zlatica Zudová-Lešková

 

Sources:

Štátný archív Bratislava, fonds KSB [Krajský súd v Bratislave, Bratislava district court], Sign.: Tk 2613/1939.

 

References:

Karol Fremal: Sociálnodemokratická strana na Slovensku v rokoch 1938–1944 [The Social Democratic Party in Slovakia 1938–1944]. In: Kapitoly z dejín sociálnej demokracie na Slovensku [Chapters from the History of Social Democracy in Slovakia] (Bratislava 1996), p. 292ff.

Jozef Jablonický: Z ilegality do povstania. [From Illegality to Uprising]. Bratislava 1969, S. 50ff.

Viera Zajacová: Slováci v Mauthausene [Slovaks in Mauthausen] (Bratislava 1970), p. 120.

 

Zlatica Zudová-Lešková: Cesty k sebe. Česi v odboji na Slovensku v rokoch 1939–1943 [Pathways to Oneself. Czechs in the Resistance in Slovakia 1939–1943] (Prague 2009), p. 81ff.

Translation into English: Joanna White

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