Jan Palach's suicide remembered 38 years on

Tuesday marks the 38th anniversary of the self-immolation of Jan Palach, the young student whose suicide transformed him into a symbol of Czechoslovak resistance following the 1968 Soviet-led invasion. Jan Palach would have turned 59 this year he not taken his own life. His legacy, however, lives on.

On January 16th, 1969, a 20-year-old student from Prague's Philosophy Faculty set off for Wenceslas Square, the city's busiest thoroughfare. The country was still under occupation by Soviet troops five months after the invasion. The purge of reformers within the ranks of Czechoslovakia's Communist Party - a purge which gradually fanned out to all areas of society - had begun. But worst of all, thought Jan Palach, Czechoslovaks were becoming apathetic and demoralised. To rouse them from their apathy, he decided to burn himself to death, in public.

The late Jaroslava Moserova, doctor, translator and politician, was among the first to treat Jan Palach after he was brought to hospital. His death three days later left an indelible mark on her life, and from that moment on until her own death last year, Jaroslava Moserova tirelessly carried Palach's legacy, carefully explaining to journalists, politicians and ordinary people what he had done and why he had done it. Here she is talking to Radio Prague in 2003.

"I was one of those who did the first aid, who cleaned the burned areas. Of course I shall never forget it, nor the days that followed. We were all very unhappy. Not only over his fate, but over the fate of the nation, because he did it for the nation. And I think that was clear for everyone from the very first. I wasn't with him when he was being taken upstairs to the intensive care unit, but one of the nurses that was with him said that he kept repeating - 'Please tell everyone why I did it. Please tell everyone.' The reason why he did it was quite clear. It was not so much in opposition to the Soviet occupation, but the demoralisation which was setting in, that people were not only giving up, but giving in. And he wanted to stop that demoralisation. 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, all the decent people who were on the verge of making compromises. It certainly had a huge impact on young people, students. What I regret very deeply is that so many people seem to be forgetting the atmosphere of the time and what he did."

Jan Palach's funeral became a focal point for opposition to the occupation, as Czechoslovaks mourned not only a bright and talented student but their own lost sovereignty. A month later another student, Jan Zajic, burned himself to death on the same spot, and more suicides followed.

Historians are divided as to the effect of Palach's suicide. In January 1989 thousands of demonstrators gathered on Wenceslas Square to mark the 20th anniversary of his death; the regime's brutal crackdown of the protest was a dress rehearsal for the Velvet Revolution of November 1989.

Later on Tuesday a small ceremony will be held at the Philosophy Faculty, where former teachers and fellow students will remember Jan Palach - and what he did one day in January 38 years ago.

There was a You -Tube movie posted on this site a few months back that had some guy go undercover into one of the Czech mosks to see what was going on. the Imans were stating those strapping bombs to themselves and blowing themselves, women and children up as the equivelent to the actions of this guy.

Perhaps this suicide was modeled on the suicides of Buddhist monks in South Vietnam that persuaded JFK to assassinate Diem as a Catholic "tyrant" who was oppressing Buddhists. I'm not sure how the dates match up. That didn't work out well for the South Vietnamese.

In any case, I have reservations about committing suicide as a heroic act. It doesn't accord well with the traditions of Christian Europe.

I hesitate to say this, but I also hesitate to leave it unsaid, lest others imitate it. Certainly the death of this promising young man was tragic.

I would contrast this, however, with the man who stood in front of a tank in Tienanmen Square. That's my idea of a heroic deed. Almost the same, but not suicide.

technically I suppose that's true although the man in Tienanmen Square was in essence also trading his life for a principle or noble deed for surely he understood that act would result in his death - "suicide by government".

There's a narrow difference, certainly, but there is a difference. Setting yourself on fire is deliberate suicide. Putting yourself in front of a tank might be called metaphorical suicide, but in fact the agent of his death was the tank driver.

It's similar to war. If you go into terrible danger for an important mission, you are likely to be killed, maybe in some cases 100% certain to be killed, but it's not suicide.

The Medal of Honor winner who was recently honored for throwing himself on a grenade to save his friends wasn't a suicide, although that's about as close to it as you might think you could get.

I doubt Palach would have gotten the idea of setting himself on fire if it had not been for the examples of the Buddhist monks in South Vietnam (which had been well-publicized so he would have known of them).

Yesterday on C-SPAN's BookTV they had on Mark Moyar, who has a book recently published by Cambridge University Press called Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965.

I caught only a portion of it, but Moyar was praising Diem as a genuine nationalist and indicating that the US decision to get rid of him was one of our worst mistakes (thanks, JFK). He contrasted Diem favorably with Maliki, whom he considers less of a nationalist because too tied to one faction.

It kind of mystifies me that JFK gets so much credit around here as someone who stood up to the Russians. Yes, I suppose he did, but he was a lousy president.

First he started out with the Bay of Pigs. Eisenhower came in to advise him, Don't start a war unless you intend to win it. But he started it, and then immediately backed out, leaving the Cuban patriots to die pointlessly.

That persuaded Kruschev that he was a wimp who could be pushed around, and he had to spend the rest of his time in office playing Mr. Tough Guy.

I think one reason he decided to assassinate Diem, who was a loyal ally, is because Diem was Catholic, and Kennedy was terrified that people would say that he was siding with a Catholic against Buddhists. He bent over backward never to act like a Catholic in office, setting still another unfortunate precedent.

The immediate result of the assassination was that the South Vietnamese war effort fell apart, and never really recovered. So once again Kennedy started a war he apparently never intended to win. LBJ made things worse, and Nixon was stuck with picking up the pieces, which he was then prevented from doing by the party that started the war in the first place.

A bit off the point of this thread, but people need some reminding of what happened in Vietnam.

There was also the meeting between Kennedy and Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, where Khrushchev sized Kennedy up in person and decided he was weak.

I wouldn't go as far as saying Kennedy assassinated Diem. The US learned of a plot to overthrow Diem and didn't try to stop it, so Kennedy was more an accomplice than the perpetrator. Supposedly he believed Diem and his brother would be allowed to leave the country after being overthrown, and was shocked to hear that they had been murdered. That's something like being one of two robbers holding up a liquor store--your partner goes ahead and shoots the owner, and you get charged with murder even though you had no intention of killing anyone when you went into the store.

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