Jan Opletal

Life

Opletal stems from modest circumstances. He was born in Lhota nad Moravou , a small village near Náklo in the north Moravia on New Year's Day of 1915. He was the eighth child in the family of Anna and Štěpán Opletal. His parents officially declared his date of birth per 31 December 1914 to be able to send him to school one year earlier. Opletal visited the elementary school in Náklo and then one year the community school in Štěpánov u Olomouce. Actually, he was supposed to undergo a training at the pump factory of the Brothers Sigmund in Lutín, but in 1926 he was admitted to the high school of Litovel, on the recommendation of his teachers who recognized his intelligence and discipline. He joined the gymnastics movement Sokol and also used their educational offerings. He completed his Abitur in 1934 with distinction. After that, he wanted to become a pilot and applied in the flying school of Prostějov. He was not admitted, due to lack of vision. He then went to become an officer at the Hranice na Moravě school for reserve officers and concluded his service in the Czechoslovak Army in a cavalry regiment.

In the winter semester of 1936-37 he began to study medicine at the Charles University in Prague.

On 28 October 1939, the day of the anniversary of Czechoslovak independence, Jan Opletal and other medical students called for Resistance against the German occupation and distributed flyers. Throughout the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia strikes and demonstrations of the Czech population took place. In Prague more and more people gathered in the course of the day, singing the national anthem, demanding the return of Edvard Beneš and chanting anti-German slogans. Some throw stones toward German shops. Since the Czech police, who sympathized with the demonstrators, did not step in, German civilian policemen began to shoot into the crowd. The worker Václav Sedláček was shot to death and Jan Opletal was seriously injured by a shot in his abdomen. Opletal succumbed to his injury on 11 November 1939.

On 15 November 1939 he was laid out and driven through Prague. 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 inhabitants joined. When his coffin was taken to the station for transport to his native village in Moravia, the crowd, now grown to thousands of people, intonated the Czech hymn Kde domov můj. When the funeral procession reached Charles Square, it came to confrontations with the Czech police and the students withdrew into the building of the Technical University. They were allowed to leave only in small groups under supervision, but they later joined again to a procession with several thousand participants, which tried to break through the city center. It turned into another anti-Nazi demonstration after the silent march of 28 October. As a result, the Reichsprotektor Konstantin von Neurath, the Nazi-representative heading the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, started the so called Sonderaktion Prag on 17 November 1939. He closed all Czech universities and colleges, had 1,850 students arrested and ordered the execution of nine student leaders, including František Skorkovský. Over 1,200 Czech students were interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Opletal's remains were transferred into his native village of Náklo in the Olomouc Region. The murder of Jan Opletal and the subsequent closure of the Prague University led to solidarity demonstrations at the University of Belgrade on 18 November 1939.

Velvet Revolution

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Sonderaktion Prag, demonstrations were held in Bratislava and Prague on 16 and 17 November 1989. This uprising finally led to the Velvet Revolution and the election of Václav Havel as President on 29 December 1989. The Prague demonstrators chose the same route as 50 years before the funeral procession for Jan Opletal: from Albertov via the Národní třída to Wenceslas Square.

Accolades

Remembrance

In the Czech Republic, numerous streets are named after Jan Opletal, including steets in Brno, Jablonec nad Nisou, Most, Olomouc, Poděbrady, Prague and Řevnice. The high school in Litovel, which he attended, now bears his name. Furthermore, there are a number of monuments reminding him, e.g. a memorial stone in the forest west of Březina u Křtin.

Since 1941, the events of 17 November 1939 are commemorated as International Students Day by the International Union of Students and other groups. A Jan Opletal Prize is awarded each year by the European Students' Union on this occasion.

In 1989 and 2015 two commemorative stamp were issued in memory of Jan Opletal.

In August 2014, an exhibition in Prague recalled Jan Opletal and the closure of the Czech universities.