On November 17, the Czech Republic celebrates the public holiday — Day of Struggle for Freedom and Democracy (Den boje za svobodu a demokracii). Events that occurred in 1939 and 1989 are associated with this date. The autumn of 1939 was marked by the first mass protest against the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia.
On October 28, 1939, in Prague, students demonstrated to remember and celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the Czechoslovak state. However, units of the occupiers dispersed the demonstration, and medical student Jan Opletal was shot dead. On November 15, 1939, the day of the young man's funeral, hundreds of people again took to the streets. The funeral grew into a new demonstration. German units dispersed people again, and dozens of demonstrators were arrested.
The apogee of general tension became on November 17, when the Gestapo and SS men surrounded student dormitories early in the morning. More than 1,200 students were arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp. Nine students and student activists were executed without trial in prison dungeons in the Ruzyne district of Prague. By order of Hitler, all Czech higher education institutions were closed. This day wrote a tragic page in the history of the Czech people — since 1946, the date November 17 began to be celebrated as International Students' Day.
On November 17, 1989, on the day of the 50th anniversary of the resistance of Prague students, about 75 thousand citizens — students, actors, dissidents, including future President Vaclav Havel — gathered in the Albertov-Vyshegrad area in Prague. The demonstration was violently dispersed by the authorities of communist Czechoslovakia. The next day there was a storm of protests across the country.
On November 19, the socio-political movement «Civil Forum» was created at the Drama Club, which united all independent initiatives, representatives of churches, art unions and other citizens seeking regime change. «Civil Forum» expressed support for the general strike on November 27 and proposed starting a dialogue with government authorities on the removal from leadership positions of all government officials, especially those who contributed to the entry of Warsaw Pact troops into the country in 1968, on the release of political prisoners, on granting freedom speech and press to the media, and on punishing those responsible for the brutal dispersal of student demonstrations on November 27, a general strike took place.
All these events represented the beginning of subsequent demonstrations, speeches, negotiations and strikes and went down in history as the « velvet revolution», as a result of which the communist regime fell in Czechoslovakia, and democracy gradually began to develop in the country.
By Law № 167/1990 Sb. November 17 was declared a public holiday — as Students' Day for Freedom and Democracy, and in 2000 it was renamed Freedom and Democracy Day.
A memorial plaque with the inscription «17.11.1989» was installed on one of the buildings on Narodnaya Street in the center of Prague, from where the « velvet revolution» began in Czechoslovakia in the fall of 1989. From the very morning of November 17, people come here and bring candles and flowers.