Word: palach
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...Palach's Funeral and Seven Days to Remember, Thursday, March...
LAST SUNDAY was the fifth anniversary of the death of Jan Palach, the Czech student who set himself afire to protest the Soviet occupation of his country. The press of subsequent events has blurred the memory of the Czechoslovak people's effort in 1968 to build a genuinely communist society, where freedom, equality, and brotherhood--ideals nations have acknowledged as desirable since 1789 but seldom pursued at any time--could become a reality. Sunday's anniversary is a reminder of that effort...
JUST RECENTLY, The New York Times reported that authorities in Czechoslavakia have removed the remains of Jan Palach from an unmarked grave in a Prague cemetary and transferred them to an unknown location...
Still, Czech citizens continue to appear day after day at Palach's former gravesite to mourn the young man who became a symbol of Czech resistance to Soviet imperialism. They have not forgotten the reform era of the "Prague Spring" when Alexander Dubcek and the other liberal leaders tried to humanize the face of Czech socialism; they have not forgotten the Russian tanks that rumbled into their country in August, 1968; they have not forgotten the martyr, Palach, who immolated himself in a central square of Prague in 1969 to protest the Soviet decision to deprive Czechoslavakia of self-determination...
...showed a dangerous tendency to want to run their own affairs--without regard for Soviet wishes. The Soviets paid a high price for the subsequent brutal repression. They stood exposed before the world as imperialist aggressors. But they paid the price gladly to keep their valuable empire intact. Jan Palach could not forget. The Czech people cannot forget. Those who oppose imperialism should not forget...