Ryszard Siwiec Memorial
There is a memorial in Prague to a man who protested about the Communist Totalitarian regime and specifically the August 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. A man called Ryszard Siwiec who died for his cause. A “grey man” as he described himself. The thing is….. he wasn’t Czech and he didn’t die in Prague.
When we think of the protests that came with the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia the name that springs to mind will be Jan Palach who self-immolated on January 15th 1969. His death, the method and reasoning behind it would be discussed and questioned for decades. Not many people remember that Ryszard Siwiec had done the same thing 4 months previously in Poland.
Ryszard Siwiec
Born in 1909 he would be educated as a physicist but he chose a career as an accountant which he did until WW2 broke out. He left Warsaw, secretly joined the Polish Army and returned to Warsaw to work in a fruit and veg shop. Post war he became joint owner of a winery but after nationalisation by the communists he worked there as a regular employee and as the company accountant.
A deeply patriotic man, Ryszard Siwiec railed against the regime but did not lose his sense of humanity. As 1968 progressed it was clear that he had it in mind to make a statement. In April 1968 he wrote his last will and testament (his family would not know about this until after he died). As Czechoslovakia spent the early summer months of 1968 battling politically to maintain socialist freedoms, Ryszard Siwiec looked on. Then the events of August 21st 1968 and the invasion of Prague by Soviet Warsaw Pact countries including his own country, Poland.
It was a tipping point. On September 8th Ryszard Siwiec attended the Warsaw Harvest Festival in a stadium packed with 100,000 people watching the formation dancing. It was at that moment that he poured the contents of two soft drink bottles filled with flammable liquid and set himself on fire.
As with Jan Palach, the fire consumed him and left him with second and third degree burns to 85% of his body. Before his death on September 12th aged 59, Ryszard Siwiec recorded several statements to the security police that were never made public until 1990. His death was not reported outside of Poland until Radio Free Europe got the details in March 1969. What were made public were the recordings that he made calling on his fellow Poles and supporters of Democracy everywhere.
“People in whom there may still be a spark of humanity, of human feelings, come to your senses! Hear my cry, the cry of an ordinary, common man, a son of the nation, who loved his own and other people’s freedom above all else, above his own life, come to your senses! It is not too late!”
“My life is nothing compared to the destruction threatening humanity. My death and the death of my family is zero. Long live truth, long live freedom, long live humanity, long live democracy, long live the Constitution! Let the total terror that is taking over the entire world perish! I have no inspirers, I have no accomplices. I am protesting alone, alone, the only one. Someone must shout with a loud voice: enough! No! I am the one shouting: no!!!”
The Memorial to Ryszard Siwiec was unveiled in 2009 and is located outside Prague’s Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. The street “Siwiecova” is named after him. https://maps.app.goo.gl/CRCNp8KSRgGDa86dA
Something Related or a Few Minutes Away
Attractions – Communism Museum
Services – Prague Main Train Station