Rather than the residence of an illustrious fellow citizen to be proud of, it seems more like a ghost house, the place of a tragedy, which bypassers usually walk past briskly with their eyes facing the ground
On the streets, faces numbed by the cold and little desire to stop to chat, all the more if there is a stranger asking for directions to get to the house of Jan Palach. The village of Svetaty is located in central Bohemia, a few dozen kilometres north of Prague, and it is here where on the dawn of the 16th of January 1969, the young philosophy student left for the capital to conduct his famously extreme act.
The bypassers get straight to the point with indications and are so hurried when answering that they inevitably make you think about the often complicated relationship the czechs have with their national heroes. It is essentially the same with Vaclav Havel. Regarding Jan Palach there is even a slight sense of guilt, the feeling of having left that silent boy, passionate historian, who at the age of 21, set himself alight in Wenceslas square to arouse the awareness of his people, and urge them to not surrender to the process of normalization. Czechoslovakia had been invaded a few months earlier by the troops of the Warsaw pact.
The house, deserted for a while, is a few hundred metres north of the main square, almost on the village borders, surrounded by a courtyard and uncultivated hedges. The building also had a canal running alongside it. For long minutes the only sign of life is a black cat which cautiously pretends to hide in a bush covered by the snow. All this among total silence.
Jan lived here with his mother, his father had been dead for several years.
On the wall there is a plaque, a bit discoloured from time passed, on which it says “From here Jan Palach faced death, for the freedom of the czech nation.” Rather than the residence of an illustrious fellow citizen to be proud of, it seems more like a ghost house, the place of a tragedy, which bypassers usually walk past briskly with their eyes facing the ground.
It is almost impossible to peek inside due to the ice which clouds the glass of the windows, but it is clear that nobody has looked after the place for years. On the first floor is a broken window and shutters creak in the silence. It was the room of Jan. There you can catch a glimpse of an old chandelier and some wallpaper, the type which was fashionable in the Czechoslovakia of the sixties.
The house should now be the property of a distant relative, who however does not live here in Vsetaty, as a passerby explains in a few words, having appeared from a bridge. Because here among us, none of them live here any more,” he states as if the Palachs were almost a foreign body to the local community.
As far as we know, the only brother Jiri Palach, by now has been living in the north of Bohemia for a while and has not been seen in the area for years.
A little further on an old woman added “yes of course I knew him. Jan was a year above in primary school but to be honest I didn’t even play with him, because at that age….a one year difference is a lot. He was however a very normal schoolkid, like many others.” Beside her are two children who have just left nursery school. “What will I will my grandchildren one day about Jan Palach? I really would not know. So many years have passed. Children today are also interested in different things, perhaps in computers, and electronic games.”
In order to go back to the railway station, there is a long alley, with a pavement covered in snow and ice. It is almost the evening and commuters are heading home from work in both directions. They are walking hurriedly, while someone slips into one of the few bars.
While waiting for the train, next to the ticket office, a young teacher, Lucie, a reverse commuter, is waiting for the train for Prague. Having graduated a few years before in the historical Charles University, who knows how many times she saw the facade of the philosophy faculty over the years, with the mortuary mask of Jan Palach, on the square named after him.
“Of course we talk about it with the students in the lessons, but it takes a lot more to get them to understand the figure of this national hero of ours. It would be necessary that the familes contribute as well, but it common for parents to prefer not top speak to them about the historical circumstances which lead to the tragedy. Even school books refer to these issues in a very general manner, without ever entering into the historical details of the period, which is still hugely controversial in the eyes of the people.”
The small train, half-empty, departs a few minutes late for Prague. It happens to be a locomotive with few wagons and many years of service behind him. It passes slowly over a large bridge on the Elbe. From the windows you see the same landscapes which Jan Palach saw on his last journey. Before arriving in Prague, the train stops at about ten small stations and crosses vast clearings with the occasional islet of forest. A few roe deer and many hares run freely on the white snow.
The idea of dedicating a museum to him
Recently the newspapers have been discussing the initiative taken by the young prague graphic designer, to bring forward the idea of transforming the house of Jan palach in Vsetaty into a museum. “I can barely understand how it is possible that this house still remains in these neglected conditions, and that nobody before me, came up with the idea of making a museum out of it, a place of our national memory..”
The idea for which the association “Národ pohasl,” has developed (there is even a page in facebook), has been backed by a range of key personalities such as the foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg, the monsignor Tomáš Halík, and Marta Kubišová (the singer of the Prague Spring). Even the president Vaclav Havel, shortly before his death, declared himself to be in favour of the project.