Pivotal national holiday in Prague and Bratislava commemorating two defining moments of democratic courage: resistance against Nazi occupation in 1939 and the peaceful spark of the 1989 Velvet Revolution.
On November 17, 1989, on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1939 Nazi crackdown against university students, approximately 15,000 students gathered in Prague for a permitted memorial march. When police brutally charged the peaceful demonstrators on Národní Třída, public outrage ignited the Velvet Revolution (Něžná revoluce). Led by playwright Václav Havel and the Civic Forum, mass general strikes and hundred-thousand-strong demonstrations forced the peaceful collapse of the totalitarian Communist Party of Czechoslovakia within weeks, ushering in multi-party parliamentary democracy.
