Jan Palach’s Self-Immolation: 55 Years Ago

January 16 marks exactly 55 years since Czech student Jan Palach’s self-immolation at the top of Wenceslas Square that would lead to his death in hospital three days later.

Memorial events were held in Prague on Tuesday marking the self-immolation of Jan Palach 55 years ago, on January 16, 1969. Senate speaker Miloš Vystrčil and other senators laid a wreath at a memorial at the top of Wenceslas Square, where Palach, who was 20, set himself on fire in protest at apathy in the face of the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia.

About half-past one, Jan Palach doused himself in petrol and set himself on fire near the fountain at the National Museum in Wenceslas Square in Prague. After several minutes, those passing managed to extinguish the living torch.

The seriously burnt student was taken to the Faculty Hospital in Vinohrady, but the injuries were so serious that he had no hope of surviving.

He left a letter at the site explaining the motives of his terrible 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 He died three days later, on 19 January 1969.

Palach called himself “Torch no. 1” in his letter, giving the impression that he was a part of a larger group which in fact did not exist. But several others followed his example in Czechoslovakia and other eastern bloc countries.

“People must fight against the evil they feel equal to measure up to at that moment,” Palach said before he died in hospital on Jan. 19.

Palach’s death did not change the gradual, almost total resignation in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. For almost twenty years, the name Jan Palach could only be whispered in public.

His life story immediately got into “forbidden” songs or strongroom literary works. Only after a change in relations in the autumn of 1989 could historians, documentarists or artists officially and freely present it.