Alice Herz

Who was Alice Herz?

Alice Herz was the first activist in the United States known to have immolated herself in protest of the escalating Vietnam War, following the example of Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức who immolated himself in protest of the alleged oppression of Buddhists under the South Vietnamese government. She was a longtime peace activist, and also spoke Esperanto. Herz self-immolated on March 16, 1965, in Detroit, Michigan, at the age of 82. Stephen Burke and sons, William Burke and Stephen Burke, were driving by and saw her burning and put out the flames. She died of her injuries ten days later. According to Taylor Branch's At Canaan's Edge, it was President Lyndon Baines Johnson's address to Congress in support of a Voting Rights Act that led her to believe the moment was propitious to protest the Vietnam War. The war continued for another ten years following her death.

A German of Jewish ancestry, Herz was a widow who left Germany with her daughter, Helga, in 1933, saying that she anticipated the advent of Nazism long before it arrived. Alice and Helga Herz were living in France when Germany invaded in 1940.