Ivan Sekanina was known, among other things, as an advocate of Ernst Torgler and Georgi Dimitrov, accused of igniting the German Reichstag, which earned him the hatred of Nazis. On 16 March 1939, the day after Germans started the occupation of Czechoslovakia, Ivan Sekanina was arrested. He was executed in Sachsenhausen on 21 May 1940, on the day of 32nd birthday of his wife.