to his injury on 11 November 1939. On 15 November 1939 he was laid out and driven through Prague. More than 3,000 students were present at the memorial event at the Institute of Pathology and the adjacent chapel. Hundreds of students followed his coffin afterwards, and more and more local people joined the march. His coffin was taken to the station for transport to his native village in Moravia, where the crowd, now thousands strong, intonated the Czech hymn Kde domov můj. The funeral procession continued to Charles Square, where it came into confrontation with Czech police. The students withdrew into the building of the Technical University. They were allowed to leave only in small groups under supervision, but they later joined again to form a procession with several thousand participants, which tried to break through to the city center. It turned into another anti-Nazi demonstration after the silent march of 28 October. As a result, the Reichsprotektor Konstantin von Neurath, the Nazi-representative heading the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, started the so-called Sonderaktion Prag on 17 November 1939. He closed all Czech universities and colleges, had 1,850 students arrested and ordered the execution of nine student leaders, including František Skorkovský. Over 1,200 Czech students were interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Opletal's remains were transferred to his native village of Náklo in the Olomouc Region. The murder of Jan Opletal and the subsequent closure of the Prague University led to solidarity demonstrations at the University of Belgrade on 18 November 1939. Velvet Revolution On the 50th anniversary of the Sonderaktion Prag, 16 and 17 November 1989, demonstrations were held in Bratislava and Prague. The uprising finally led to the Velvet Revolution and the election of Václav Havel as President on 29 December 1989. The Prague demonstrators chose the same route taken by the funeral procession for Jan Opletal 50 years earlier: from Albertov via the Národní třída to Wenceslas Square. Accolades 1945: Doctorate MUDr. mu "in memoriam" of the Charles University in Prague. 1996: Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1. Class) postum Remembrance In the Czech Republic, numerous streets are named after Jan Opletal, including streets in Brno, Jablonec nad Nisou, Most, Olomouc, Poděbrady, Prague and Řevnice. The high school in Litovel, which he attended, now bears his name. Furthermore, there are a number of monuments to him, including a memorial stone in the forest west of Březina u