Jan Palach
Jan Palach set himself on fire in Wenceslas Square to protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia and against his countrymen's acceptance of it. Born in 1948 in Všetaty, north of Prague, he was the son of a confectioner whose business was nationalised, and he studied political economy and then history and political science at Charles University. The Prague Spring of 1968, in which Alexander Dubček's government relaxed censorship and promised socialism with a human face, was the political awakening of his generation. Warsaw Pact forces invaded in August with some 250,000 troops. The immediate resistance was widespread — street protests, removed street signs, arguments with tank crews — and it faded through the autumn as the government was forced to reimpose censorship and the population subsided into what became known as normalisation. Palach's objection was to that subsidence rather than to the invasion itself. On 16 January 1969 he poured petrol over himself outside the National Museum and set it alight, running down the square before being smothered. He lived for three days with burns over most of his body. He told a visiting student that his group had drawn lots and that others would follow if demands were not met, and he asked that nobody else do it. The group's existence has never been established. His demands were the abolition of censorship and an end to the distribution of the Soviet occupation newspaper. Some 600,000 people attended his funeral. Jan Zajíc and Evžen Plocek followed him within months. His grave was removed by the authorities in 1973. He was commemorated openly again in 1989.
- Lived: 1948 CE – 1969 CE
- Nationality: Czechoslovak
- Roles: student, martyr, activist
