Ryszard Siwiec (1909—September 12, 1968) was a Polish accountant, teacher and former Home Army soldier who was the first person to set himself on fire in protest against the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. He set himself ablaze in Warsaw during a national harvest festival on September 8, 1968 at the Dziesięciolecia Stadium, and died in hospital four days later. His act was witnessed by nearly 100,000 spectators, including the national leadership and foreign diplomats who had been invited to the festival intended as a vast propaganda spectacle.[1] A father of five from Przemyśl, Siwiec planned his self-immolation in advance, leaving written and tape-recorded statements explaining his revulsion at both the Warsaw Pact invasion and communist Poland's participation in it. His death foreshadowed the famous self-immolation of Jan Palach in Prague four months later. It has not been revealed that Palach knew about Siwiec's act of protest, as the Polish communist authorities vigorously suppressed any information about it, stating only that Siwiec was "suffering from mental illness". Although his act was captured by a motion picture camera, newsreels of the festival omitted any mention of the incident.[2] Although a number of Czechoslovaks attended the festival, Siwiec's death became widely known in Czechoslovakia only after the news of it was broadcast on Radio Free Europe two months after Palach's death. After the fall of communism, Siwiec became the subject of the 1991 documentary film Hear My Cry (Usłyszcie mój krzyk), by Polish director Maciej Drygas. The film won the European Film Awards prize for "Best Documentary" that year.
Orders (posthumous)
- Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, first class, awarded in 2001 by Václav Havel, President of the Czech Republic.
- Order of Polonia Restituta, Commander's Cross, awarded in 2003 by Aleksander Kwaśniewski, President of Poland. Because of Aleksander Kwaśniewski's past as communist dignitary, Ryszard Siwiec's family refused to accept the award.
- Order of the White Double Cross, awarded in 2006 by Ivan Gašparovič, President of Slovakia
