Jan Opletal

Jan Opletal (31 December 1914/1 January 1915 – 11 November 1939) was a student of the Medical Faculty of the Charles University in Prague, who was shot at a Czechoslovak Independence Day rally on 28 October 1939.

He planned to undergo 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.

On 28 October 1939, on the anniversary of the Czechoslovak independence, Jan Opletal and other medical students called for Resistance against the German occupation, and distributed flyers.

In Prague more and more people gathered during the course of the day, singing the national anthem, demanding the return of Edvard Beneš and chanting anti-German slogans.

Since the Czech police, who sympathized with the demonstrators, did not step in, German civilian policemen began to shoot into the crowd.

His coffin was taken to the station for transport to his native village in Moravia, where the crowd, now thousands strong, intonated the Czech hymn Kde domov můj.

They were allowed to leave only in small groups under supervision, but they later joined again to form a procession with several thousand participants, which tried to break through to the city center.

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.

[8] The Prague demonstrators chose the same route taken by the funeral procession for Jan Opletal 50 years earlier: from Albertov via the Národní třída to Wenceslas Square.