In 1969, Jan Palach was not the only ‘living torch’ who protested against the suppression of freedoms and the passive attitude of the public after the beginning of the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the armies of the Warsaw Pact. Just one day after Jan Palach’s death, Josef Hlavatý, a twenty-five-year-old brewery worker, set himself on fire in Pilsen. He committed his act against the ‘Russian occupiers’ on the pedestal of the removed monument to Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk in the former Dukla Square (today’s T. G. Masaryk Square). The President of the Pilsen Region Ilona Mauritzová and the councillors Radka Trylčová and Marcela Krejsová commemorated Hlavatý’s act of protest at that place on Wednesday.
Josef Hlavatý (4 December 1943 Křimice - 25 January 1969 Plzeň)