Jan Palach (11 August 1948 – 19 January 1969; Czech pronunciation: [ˈjan ˈpalax]) was a Czech student who committed suicide by self-immolation as a political protest.

In August 1968, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the liberalising reforms of Alexander Dubček's government during what was known as the Prague Spring. A group of Czech students including Palach made a suicide pact^{[citation needed]} intending to sacrifice themselves in protest of the invasion. Prague-born Palach was the first to set himself on fire, in Wenceslas Square, on 16 January 1969.

According to Jaroslava Moserová, a burns specialist who was the first to provide care to Palach at the Charles University Faculty Hospital, Palach did not set himself on fire to protest against the Soviet occupation, but did so to protest against the "demoralization" of Czechoslovakian citizens caused by the occupation.

Most of the other students did not go through with their part, after the well-publicised pleas Palach made on his deathbed about the degree of pain they faced.

Ryszard Siwiec (Polish pronunciation: [ˈrɨʂart ˈɕivjɛt͡s]; 7 March 1909 — 12 September 1968) was a Polish accountant, teacher and former Home Army soldier who was the first person to commit suicide by self-immolation in protest against the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Siwiec set himself ablaze in Warsaw during a national harvest festival on 8 September 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. He retained consciousness after the flames had been extinguished and film footage of the incident shows him making statements before he is taken away.

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 whether 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. 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.