Panorama The 17th of November: Remembering Jan Opletal, martyr of an occupied nation
On the 28th of October, 1939, Czechoslovak Independence day, Czech students took to the streets to demonstrate against the Nazi occupation. The protest was brutally suppressed - with shots fired at random into the crowd. One student leader, Jan Opletal, was seriously wounded, and later succumbed to his injuries. Thousands turned out for his funeral procession, and protests again turned violent. Hitler ordered a swift and brutal clampdown. On the 17th of November, nine students, seen as the ringleaders, were executed and over a thousand were sent to concentration camps. The anniversary is marked worldwide as International Student's Day and has a further significance for Czechs. It was the 50th anniversary of these events, in November 1989, that sparked the Velvet Revolution, the beginning of the end of communist rule. In today's special programme, we recount the events that led the Allies to sacrifice Czechoslovakia in the vain hope of preventing war, and the martyrdom of Jan Opletal.
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
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