November 17th
A little bit of context.
Its year 1938 the Munich Betrayal was just signed by big powers, and parts of the 1st Czechoslovak Republic were given to Nazi Germany.
From left to right: Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured before signing the Munich Betrayal (photo credit: German Federal Archives / Wikipedia)
A few months later, on 15 March 1939 Hitler’s army invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia which, while nominally autonomous, was under the Third Reich’s control. The move followed the creation of the First Slovak Republic, a puppet state of Nazi Germany, founded one day before in the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia.
German troops hold a military parade in Prague’s Wenceslas Square, March 19, 1939. (photo credit: AP)
During the first months of Protectorate’s existence Czech resistance started to form. Many chose cultural venues to express their patriotic feelings. Performances of national compositions such as Bedřich Smetana’s “Má vlast”:“My fatherland” inspired spontaneous singing of the national anthem.
One of notable protests took place on the first anniversary of the Munich Betrayal on 30th September 1939 when a boycott of all public transportation in Prague was organized. Everyone except the uninformed Nazis went on foot for the entire day. Bulletins were passed inviting people to celebrate one of the most emotional dates in the young state’s history, Czechoslovak Independence Day.
28th October Demonstration
The evening before the demonstration the most popular sites of significance to Czechoslovak history such as graves and monuments were decorated with flowers.
As the demonstration was growing in size, protesters became bolder and started to express their patriotic feelings openly, singing the national anthem – in both Czech and Slovak – shouting anti-Nazi slogans and demanding the return of the free Republic. The Nazis responded violently. German civilian police started to fire at the crowds at random. As a result, 15 people were wounded and Václav Sedláček, a 22-year old worker was killed. The second victim of the brutal repressions was Jan Opletal, a popular medical student who died of injuries a few days later.
15th November demonstration
More than 3,000 students were present at the memorial event at the Institute of Pathology and the adjacent chapel. Hundreds of students followed his coffin afterwards, and more and more local people joined the march. His coffin was taken to the station for transport to his native village in Moravia. The situation grew tense as some smaller groups of students started to sing the hymn and patriotic songs. It escalated after some people started vandalising German store fronts.
Funeral of Jan Opletals on 16th November 1939 in Náklo.(photo credit: unkrown / Wikipedia)
Dark times for Intelectulats
In response to the events, on the night of 16th November 1939 Gestapo raided student dormitories in Prague and Brno arresting hundreds of students and taking many others from their homes. It is estimated that over 1,200 students were deported to the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp.
At dawn the next day, Nazis shot nine alleged ringleaders of the demonstrations.
Among them were eight students,Jaroslav Klíma, Jan Weinert, Josef Adamec, Jan Černý, Marek Frauwirth, Bedřich Koula, Václav Šafránek, František Skorkovský, as well as Associate professor of history Josef Matoušek.
All Czech universities and institutes were closed; initially for three years, eventually till the end of the war.
photo credit: NY times 18th November 1939
November student protests were to be the last major Czech demonstration against the Protectorate government, but their victims and the determination in resistance against the Nazis were not to be forgotten.
50th anniversary
After the war, 17 November became a national holiday in Czechoslovakia. During the Cold War, the communist regime used International Students’ Day for its own propaganda purposes but since the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion, the commemorations of 17 November were only formulaic. Yet, the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Nazi atrocities in 1989 turned out to be exceptional. On 17 November, a week after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a 15,000-strong student crowd assembled at the Albertov Campus of Charles University in Prague, expressing their criticism and discontent towards the hated regime, demanding democratization and reforms. Josef Šárka, a participant in Jan Opletal’s funeral fifty years earlier, expressed his support by addressing the crowds at the university campus: “I am glad you are fighting for the same thing as we fought for back then.”
The students continued their demonstration, marching towards Wenceslas Square while singing the national anthem and shouting the slogan: “Máme holé ruce”,”We have bare hands”. They were then ambushed and beaten up by riot police. The police action triggered a few days of protests that turned out to be the spark that ignited the Velvet Revolution, leading to the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
20th Noveber demonstration Prague
20th Noveber demonstration Bratislava