Word: palach
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Still, there is no precedent in Czechoslovakia for Palach's attempt to provoke unrest by the deliberate, fiery kind of self-destruction that Buddhists used in South Viet Nam, and the first appalled reaction was to dismiss his act as the product of a deranged mind...
Duplicate Martyrdom. What caused that view to change was a feeling, even in the government, that Palach's death had to be taken as a serious political protest. While President Ludvik Svoboda pleaded against the repetition of "this horrible deed," he declared sympathetically on television that, "as a soldier, I am able to assess the self-denial and the personal courage of Jan Palach." Student and some union leaders quickly moved to channel the nation's horror and sympathy for Palach into full-scale political protest. First in Prague and then in other cities, they staged memorial marches...
...Palach reportedly made a deathbed plea to "let no one else do it." His companions in the protest death pact apparently thought better of their vow-or at least about the method. In Prague, a pretty 18-year-old coed named Blanka Nachazelova died with her head in a gas oven. She left behind a note saying that she should have been Torch No. 2 but had chosen to use gas out of fear of the pain. The Czechoslovak Interior Ministry insisted that she had been forced to kill herself by unspecified other parties...
...bizarre and frightful contagion, no fewer than ten other young men, six inside Czechoslovakia and four elsewhere in Europe, set themselves ablaze in eight days following Palach's suicide. They included a 23-year-old Brno locksmith who burned himself in front of a memorial to Palach; a 24-year-old Czechoslovak serving time for robbery; and a 35-year-old Austrian dairy worker who had just been dismissed from his job. None apparently acted from political motives, and several had previous records of suicide attempts. Local authorities could only speculate that they thought they could somehow achieve Palach...
Honor Guard. Thousands of mourners waited up to three hours to pass Palach's body as he lay in state at Charles University under a blanket of flowers. Seven university deans and rectors, dressed in their medieval robes, formed an honor guard around the coffin, and sympathizers throughout Prague pinned crape-trimmed miniature flags on their clothes...