20-year old Czech philosophy student
Jan Palach died on January 19 1969 after suffering for
three days in hospital from self-inflicted third-degree burns. On
January 16 1969, Palach, a quiet student of philosophy standing at the top of Wenceslas Square, at the
foot of the steps of the Czech National Museum, poured petrol over his
head and lit it on fire, five months after Soviet tanks had rolled into Czechoslovakia to end a swelling reform movement, to protest against the lack of freedom and the passivity of its citizens, hoping to inspire compatriots to stand up to their occupiers,.His act was modelled on the 1963 self-immolation of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thin Quang Duc in Saigon, protesting at the Vietnam war.
During an interview in the hospital and in his suicide letter,
he called for a strike and expressed dissatisfaction with the
resignation of citizens toward the regime’s policies.“People must fight against the evil they feel equal to measure up to at that moment,” he managed to say, With 85 percent of
his body covered in third degree burns, he passed away in the hospital
three days after his self-immolation attempt.He had made the ultimate sacrifice. Palach left a short
and succinct suicide note at the site explaining the motives for his actions. Ominously, he signed his suicide note 'Torch Number One', giving the impression that he was part of a larger group, which in fact did not exist.
He left a letter at the site explaining the motives of his final act:
“As our nation is living in a desperate situation, and its reconciliation with fate has reached its utmost stage, we have decided that in this way we will express our protest and shake the conscience of the nation …ˮ
It did. Following Palach’s self-immolation, many Czechs and Slovaks went
on hunger strike; others took to the streets. They insisted that
Palach’s calls, expressed in his farewell letters, to abolish
censorship and stop the dissemination of the Soviet propaganda
publication Zpravy should be heeded.
In death, Jan Palach would become known as “the conscience of the
nation”, hailed as a martyr of exceptional courage and character. He is held up as the national symbol of the Prague Spring, a period
of political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak
Socialist Republic that lasted approximately seven months, from January
5th to August 21, 1968.
The Prague Spring began with the election of reformist Alexander
Dubček as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
(KSČ). In August that year, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact
members invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress the reforms. The week after
the invasion saw nonviolent resistance spark across the country, and the
beginning of a massive wave of emigration, due to the suppression of
speech, media, and many other freedoms. Jan Palach became a symbol of
that resistance,
Palach’s funeral at Prague’s Olšany Cemetery on January 25 turned
into a huge demonstration of opposition against the Soviet Union's crushing of the liberal reforms of the Prague Spring, attended by at least 200,000 people. Protests and services of remembrance took place across the country, with people shouting anti-communist and anti-Soviet slogans.
The authorities allowed these demonstrations and marches to take place,
sensing the need of the people to voice their discontent. But soon,
marches were broken up as the regime reasserted its control. Palach’s
grave in Prague, which was attracting far too many visitors, had become a
shrine adorned with flowers, candles and poems.During October of 1973, without
asking the family’s permission, the Secret Police had him cremated and
replaced Palach with the body of an elderly lady in the Olšany grave.
His ashes remained with his mother in Všetaty. The police would not even
allow her to put the urn in the local cemetery until 1974. The Secret
Police watched his grave, forbidding followers from placing flowers on
Palach’s resting place. Palach’s ashes were transported to Olšany, Prague in
1990.
Palach wrote in his suicide letter that he did not want others to
follow his example. Yet some did not heed his warning. The day
after Palach’s death Josef Hlavatý committed an act of self-immolation
in front of a memorial to first democratic Czechoslovak president, Tomáš
Garrigue Masaryk in Pilsen. Notably marking a month after Palach’s funeral
18-year old Jan Zajíc, a former friend of Pelach's poured gasoline on himself at Wenceslas Square on 25 February 1969, In his suicide note, entitled ‘Torch no.2’, Zajic wrote:
‘I
am not doing this to be mourned, nor to be famous, and I am not out of
my mind, either. With this act, I want to give you the courage to
finally resist letting yourself be pushed around by a few dictators.’
Other deaths by fire took place in Jihlava and Košice. The
self-immolation trend was not limited to Czechoslovakia, though.
Students in other Communist countries also attempted suicide in this way.It was later copied by a wave of Indian students
who set themselves alight in 1990 in protest at changes in quota systems
for entry into university and the civil service.In
Britain in 1993, Graham Bamford, a 48-year-old former haulage
contractor, burned himself to death outside the House of Commons to
protest at the horrors of Bosnia. It was later echoed at the start of the Arab Spring revolution in
Tunisia, which began after street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on
fire in December 2010..
After Palach’s courageous death, however the situation in Czechoslovakia did not improve.His act failed to overturn the consolidation of power by Soviet-backed
hard-liners who brought a period of repression that lasted until the end
of communist rule in 1989. Th protests and Palach's demands went unheeded. Censorship remained in place and the Soviet occupiers continued distributing, their propaganda publication. Nothing had changed and the Czech and Slovak drifted in apathy,.
Tet Jan Palach;s name though became a key point of reference in seminal events leading
up to the fall of communism, with rallies in his name crucial in
mobilising support outside dissent circles.Twenty years later, anti-Communist dissident Vaclav Havel was
detained as he laid a flower at the top of Wenceslas Square to
commemorate Palach on January 16, 1989, sparking thousands
of demonstrators, mainly students, to flock to Wenceslas Square every day for a week in what later became known as ' Palach week.' Lots of people consider these gatherings to his memory to have been a dress rehearsal for the
Velvet Revolution the following November that brought down Czechoslovakia's communist regime, which saw Havel becomming the country's president, with many seeing this as the ultimate testament to
Palach's legacy.
Following the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia, a bronze cross honouring both Palach and Jan Zajic was embedded into the
ground on Wenceslas Square, as if melting into the pavement, on the
exact spot where Jan Palach had staged his desperate protest. A small memorial with Palach’s
death mask adorns the façade of Charles University’s Faculty of
Philosophy, and the square on which the building is situated is named
after him. Squares in Rome and Luxembourg also bear the martyr’s name.
Streets named after Palach can be found in Luxembourg, France, Poland,
Bulgaria, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. There is even a Palach
memorial inside a glacier tunnel in Switzerland.
Palach’s self-immolation has been widely referenced in music, literature, poetry, movies, and other cultural forms.Songs and poems have
been written about Palach.The music video for the song “Club Foot” by the band Kasabian is also dedicated to Palach. Written by Charles Sabatos, the book Burning Body: Icon of Resistance: Literary Representations of Jan Palach also carries his memories. A radio play and a documentary also focus on
the Všetaty native. In 1991 President Havel posthumously awarded him a
medal for serving democracy and upholding human rights,
He was also immortalised by the 2018 movie named after him, starring
Czech actors. The movie is currently available on Netflix in Czech with
English subtitles. More information on the movie can be found here.
Palach’s incredible sacrifice was not in vain. He stood up to the harsh
regime while others merely accepted the political situation. He gave his
life because he believed in democracy and human rights.Though his immediate political goals failed, Jan Palach inspired and
steeled the resolve of countless others to fight for freedom during the
two decades of ‘Normalisation’ that followed the crushing of the Prague
Spring. And for this he will
never be forgotten.
Jan Palach Memorial, Prague, Czechoslavakia
