Jan Opletal (1 January 1915 – 11 November 1939) was a student of the Medical Faculty of the Charles University in Prague, who was shot at a Czechoslovak Independence Day rally on 28 October 1939. He was severely injured at this anti-Nazi demonstration against the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and died two weeks later. Jan Opletal is seen as a symbolic figure of the Czech resistance against Nazism. Life Opletal came from modest circumstances. He was born in the village of Lhota nad Moravou (now part of Náklo) in central Moravia on New Year's Day of 1915. He was the eighth child in the family of Anna and Štěpán Opletal. His parents officially declared his date of birth as 31 December 1914, in order to send him to school one year earlier. Opletal attended the elementary school in Náklo and then spent one year at the community school in Štěpánov. He planned to undergo training at the pump factory of the Brothers Sigmund in Lutín, but in 1926 he was admitted to the high school of Litovel, on the recommendation of his teachers who recognized his intelligence and discipline. He joined the gymnastics movement Sokol and also used their educational offerings. He completed his Abitur in 1934 with distinction. After that, he wanted to become a pilot and applied to the flying school of Prostějov, but he was not admitted due to his poor eyesight. He went on to become an officer at the Hranice na Moravě school for reserve officers and concluded his service in the Czechoslovak Army in a cavalry regiment. In the winter semester of 1936–37 he began to study medicine at the Charles University in Prague. On 28 October 1939, on the anniversary of the Czechoslovak independence, Jan Opletal and other medical students called for Resistance against the German occupation, and distributed flyers. Throughout the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Czech population took part in strikes and demonstrations. In Prague more and more people gathered during the course of the day, singing the national anthem, demanding the return of Edvard Beneš and chanting anti-German slogans. Some threw stones at German-owned shops. Since the Czech police, who sympathized with the demonstrators, did not step in, German civilian policemen began to shoot into the crowd. The worker Václav Sedláček was shot to death and Jan Opletal was seriously injured by a shot in his abdomen. Opletal succumbed