Ryszard Siwiec burned himself 54 years ago, his memory was honored in Prague
The grey-black painting on the torso of the building of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ÚSTR) is dominated by the inscription “Hear my cry”, the words Siwiec said in the message left behind. It also has the date when the fifty-nine-year-old clerk and teacher set himself on fire, and the Czech and Polish flags. The painting by visual artist Ondřej Vyhnánek, who did not participate in today’s pieta, is not yet complete. The expulsion will take place in the coming weeks.
Director of ÚSTR Ladislav Kudrna recalled during Monday’s piety that Siwiec, the father of five children, became the first “living torch” in the Eastern Bloc, who by his act she protested against the injustice of the Soviet occupation. He also said that there is a duty to commemorate the actions of men and women who never gave up.
“It is (…) a sad fact that Ryszard Siwiec he died for freedom at a time when there was no independent Poland, but he knew independent Poland,” said Karol Navrocký, who heads the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). Nawrock recalled that Siwi was a member of the anti-fascist Earth during the Second World War, and during the communist totalitarian era he published the testimony of the army of the army about the evil he was committing. “His death in 1968 was a deliberate gesture, it was a gesture that came from his life, it was also a gesture of solidarity with the Czech nation, solidarity with a nation whose desire for freedom was destroyed by Soviet tanks and also the tanks of other nations that took part in the invasion,” stated Navrocký.
Three months late
During the act of protest, Siwiec threw leaflets among the people with the text: “Fourteen million Czechs and Slovaks were ambushed by an army representing almost three hundred million people. Soldiers shamelessly invaded a small, peaceful and defenseless country that offered no military resistance. The shame of this act speaks for itself.” Historian Petr Blažek, who wrote a book about Siwiec, told the media on Monday that only part of the text was preserved, the rest was destroyed.
Blažek also explained that Siwiec’s act did not have a greater response in his time also because the onlookers did not seem to understand the act, and Siwiec’s friend, who he was supposed to send a letter with a message to Radio Free Europe, he did it months later. The secret police therefore kept Siwiec’s protest a secret until 1969, when the Polish editorial office of Radi Svobodná Evropa9 informed about it, which before that had not been confirmed by several sources. Blažek added that Siwiec was only publicly discussed in Poland in the early 1980s, when a brochure with his message was published.
After Siwiec’s death, according to the researcher, his family watched by the secret police, no large number of people were allowed to attend the funeral, and Siwiec’s wife Maria was forbidden by the secret police to speak to the children about what happened that she disobeyed. Blažek also noted that most of the family later managed to travel to Canada.
In 2001, Václav Havel posthumously awarded Siwiec with the Order of Tomáš Garrigu Masaryk, first class. Currently, the street in Prague where Siwiec’s monument is located is named after him.
A memorial service to honor the memory of the Pole Ryszard Siwiec, who set himself on fire in protest against the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968.
Author: ČTK / Šimánek Vít