Alice heart

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Alice Herz (born May 25, 1882 in Hamburg , † March 17, 1965 in Detroit ) was a German pacifist and journalist .

Life

Alice Herz was born to Jewish parents. She spent the First World War with her two children in Mecklenburg , later lived in Berlin-Mahlsdorf in a home on Akazienallee. She was a committed pacifist and a member of the International Women's League for Peace and Freedom .

After the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, she and her daughter Helga (her husband and blind son had already died) left Germany on March 13, 1933 and emigrated to Switzerland . Four months later they both moved to Grenoble , where they stayed until May 1940. During her stay in France, she worked on a religious and social weekly in Switzerland and occasionally wrote for the monthly " New Paths " published by Leonhard Ragaz . In May, she and her daughter were sent to Camp de Gurs for three weeks . After their release, they were given asylum by a Catholic priest in a village in the Pyrenees , about 40 km from the city of Lourdes . They reached the USA via Cuba in August 1942 and settled in Detroit . Alice Herz joined the Quakers . She was denied American citizenship as a pacifist. At the age of 82, she committed suicide by immolating herself at a Detroit crossroad in protest against the Vietnam War . She succumbed to her injuries on March 17, 1965 in Detroit.

Posthumous honor

The Japanese philosopher Shingo Shibata founded the Alice Heart Peace Foundation shortly after her death . He also wrote an anthology with texts by and about Alice Herz, including a description of her résumé. On January 27, 2003, on the occasion of the memorial day of the victims of National Socialism , a square in Berlin-Mahlsdorf was named after her .

literature

  • Alice Herz: Again witnesses for a different America. In: Quakerism. Zurich 1949, pp. 421-425.
  • Shingo Shibata: Alice Herz as a thinker and peace fighter: dialogue and joint action by Christians and socialists. Grüner, Amsterdam 1977, ISBN 90-6032-028-X .
  • Shingo Shibata: Phoenix: Letters and Documents of Alice Herz. Bruce Publishing, New York 1969.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Shingo Shibata: Alice Herz as a thinker and peace fighter: Dialogue and joint action by Christians and socialists. Grüner, Amsterdam 1977, ISBN 90-6032-028-X .
  2. ↑ Mention in the text on the occasion of the honor of her daughter Helga Herz .
  3. ↑ Shingo Shibata: Phoenix: Letters and Documents of Alice Herz. Bruce Publishing, New York 1969.
  4. ↑ Karin Schubert pays tribute to the Jewish pacifist Alice Herz ( memento from November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ); see also Berliner Kurier January 27, 2003: Alice-Herz-Platz inaugurated .
personal data
SURNAME Heart, alice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pacifist and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH May 25, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH March 17, 1965
Place of death Detroit