Jan Palach

In August 1968, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the liberalising reforms of Alexander Dubček's government during what was known as the Prague Spring. Prague-born Palach decided to sacrifice himself in protest of the invasion and set himself on fire, in Wenceslas Square, on 16 January 1969. According to a letter he sent to several public figures, an entire clandestine resistance organization had been established with the purpose of practising self-immolation until their demands were met; however, it seems that such a group never existed.[1] The demands declared in the letter were the abolition of censorship and a halt to the distribution of Zprávy, the official newspaper of the Soviet occupying forces. In addition, the letter called for the Czech and the Slovak peoples to go on a general strike in support of these demands.[2] An earlier draft of the letter that Palach wrote also called for the resignation of a number of pro-Soviet politicians,[3] but that demand did not make it into the final version, which included the remark that "our demands are not extreme; on the contrary". Palach died from his burns three days after his act, in the hospital. On his deathbed, he was visited by a female acquaintance from his college and by a student leader, to whom he had addressed one of the copies of his letter. It was reported that he had pleaded for others not to do what he had done but instead to continue the struggle by other means, although it has been doubted whether he really said that.[4]

Palach's funeral (a small group of grievers photographed by Miloň Novotný) turned into a major protest against the occupation.

According to Jaroslava Moserová, a burns specialist who was the first to provide care to Palach at the Charles University Faculty Hospital, Palach did not set himself on fire to protest against the Soviet occupation, but did so to protest against the "demoralization" of Czechoslovak citizens caused by the occupation.

It was not so much in opposition to the Soviet occupation, but the demoralization which was setting in, that people were not only giving up, but giving in. And he wanted to stop that demoralization. I think the people in the street, the multitude of people in the street, silent, with sad eyes, serious faces, which when you looked at those people you understood that everyone understands, that all the decent people were on the verge of making compromises.[5]

The funeral of Palach turned into a major protest against the occupation. A month later (on 25 February), another student, Jan Zajíc, burned himself to death in the same place. This was followed in April of the same year by Evžen Plocek in Jihlava, and by others. People in other Warsaw Pact countries also emulated his example, such as the Hungarian Sándor Bauer on 20 January 1969 and another Hungarian, Márton Moyses on 13 February 1970.

Palach's self-immolation was the third act of that kind after those of Ryszard Siwiec in Poland and Vasyl Makukh in Ukraine, which were successfully suppressed by the authorities and went mostly forgotten until the fall of communism. Palach was not known to be aware of Siwiec's and Makukh's protests.

Palach's brother.

Coffin with the remains of Jan Palach.

The memorial to Jan Palach and Jan Zajíc in front of the National Museum on Wenceslas Square by the Czech artist Barbora Veselá

Palach was initially interred in Olšany Cemetery in Prague. As his gravesite was becoming a national shrine, the Czechoslovak secret police (StB) set out to destroy any memory of Palach's deed and exhumed his remains during the night of 25 October 1973. They then cremated his body and sent the ashes to his mother in his home town of Všetaty; the body of an anonymous old woman from a rest home was laid in the vacated grave.[6] Palach's mother was not allowed to deposit the urn in the local cemetery until 1974. On 25 October 1990, Palach's ashes were officially returned to his initial gravesite in Prague.

On the 20th anniversary of Palach's death, protests ostensibly in memory of Palach (but intended as criticism of the regime) escalated into what would be called "Palach Week". The series of anticommunist demonstrations in Prague between 15 and 21 January 1989 were suppressed by the police, who beat demonstrators and used water cannons, often catching passers-by in the fray. Palach Week is considered one of the catalyst demonstrations which preceded the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia 10 months later.[7]

After the Velvet Revolution, Palach (along with Zajíc) was commemorated in Prague by a bronze cross embedded at the spot where he fell outside the National Museum, as well as a square named in his honour. The Czech astronomer Luboš Kohoutek, who left Czechoslovakia the following year, named an asteroid which had been discovered on 22 August 1969, after Jan Palach (1834 Palach). There are several other memorials to Palach in cities throughout Europe, including a small memorial inside the glacier tunnels beneath the Jungfraujoch in Switzerland.

Several later incidents of self-immolation may have been influenced by the example of Palach and his media popularity. In the spring of 2003, a total of six young Czechs burned themselves to death,[8] notably Zdeněk Adamec, a 19-year-old student from Humpolec who burned himself on 6 March 2003 on almost the same spot in front of the National Museum where Palach burnt himself, leaving a suicide note explicitly referring to Palach and the others who killed themselves in 1969, after Prague Spring.[9]

Just walking distance from the site of Palach's self-immolation, a statuary in Prague's Old Town Square honours iconic Bohemian religious thinker Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake for his beliefs in 1415. Hus himself was celebrated as a national hero for many centuries; some commentary has linked Palach's self-immolation to the execution of Hus.[10][11][12]

Memorial in Jan Palach Square (Faculty of Arts).

In the Czech Republic, many towns have streets or squares named after Palach, including Jan Palach Square in central Prague. He also had streets named after him in Luxembourg City (Luxembourg), Angers and Parthenay (France), Kraków (Poland), Assen, The Hague and Haarlem (Netherlands), Varna (Bulgaria) and Nantwich (United Kingdom). In Rome and Milan (Italy), there is a central square named after Palach with a commemorative statue. In Curepipe (Mauritius), a bus station is named after him.

The oldest rock club in Croatia, situated in Rijeka since 1969, is named Palach.[22] The main bus and metro express terminal in the town of Curepipe, Mauritius is named after Jan Palach. A student hall in Venice, Italy on the Giudecca island has also been given the name of Jan Palach.

• Jan Zajíc
• Thích Quảng Đức
• Ryszard Siwiec
• Evžen Plocek
• Romas Kalanta
• Oleksa Hirnyk
• Liviu Cornel Babeş
• Mohamed Bouazizi
• List of political self-immolations

• Jan Palach. Charles University Multimedia Project Archived 14 September 2013 at the Wayback Machine
• (in Czech) Biography of Jan Palach
• Jan Palach at Find a Grave
• "Jan Palach" Sculpture by Gerhard Juchum
• "Jan Palach memorial pages by Radio Praha"
• Document sheds new light on Jan Palach's suicide forty years on, Radio Prague, 12 January 2009