Polish Sejm speaker pays tribute to Hungarian martyrs of Prague Spring on 50th anniversary

Marek Kuchcinski, Speaker of the Polish Sejm, paid tribute to the two Hungarian martyrs of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in a tweet marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the period known as the “Prague Spring”, on Tuesday.

“Czechs Jan Palach and Jan Zajic, Pole Ryszard Siwiec and Hungarians Sándor Bauer and Márton Moyses burned like live torches,” Kuchcinski wrote in the tweet honouring the memory of the martyrs who lit themselves on fire in protest of the invasion.

Sándor Bauer, an auto-mechanic student in Budapest, was just 17 years old when he set himself on fire on January 20, 1969 in front of the National Museum following the examples of Palach and Siwiec before him. Márton Moyses of Transylvania set himself ablaze in front of the Romanian Communist Party headquarters in Brasov (Brassó) on February 13, 1970.

On July 20 this year, the Sejm passed a resolution honouring the memory of the victims of the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and communism.

Source: MTI