Mass suicide
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This article is about suicide. For those at risk, there is a wide network of offers of help in which ways out are shown. In acute emergencies, the telephone counseling and the European emergency number 112 can be reached continuously and free of charge. After an initial crisis intervention , qualified referrals can be made to suitable counseling centers on request. |
As a mass suicide (often mass suicide ), the suicide referred to a larger group of people, which is usually carried out at the same time and for the same motives. However, in some cases known as mass suicide , it is questionable whether it is suicide or murder .
Earlier story
Mass suicide occurred in AD 73 during the siege of Masada in the Roman province of Judea (today's Israel) by Roman troops. Flavius Josephus reports that the more than 900 besieged in view of their hopeless situation decided to die as free people rather than fall into the hands of the Romans. According to the account of Flavius Josephus, the besieged determined by lots some men who were to kill everyone else first and then themselves. When the Roman soldiers finally stormed the fortress, they found only two women and five children who had been hiding in a well alive. All other people in the fortress died by killing on demand or by suicide.
India
In the course of the Islamic conquest of northern India , several cases of mass suicide ( jauhar ) by Rajput warriors and their wives and children have been documented. The best known are those of Chittorgarh in 1303, 1528 and 1568, but two cases are also known from Jaisalmer .
Bali
Two cases ( puputan ) from the early 20th century are also known from the Hindu island of Bali .
Modern times
- 46 of the 47 ronin committed seppuku (suicide) on February 4, 1703 after they had avenged the death of their master and had been sentenced to death for it.
- After the Battle of Saipan in the Pacific War ended in 1944, numerous Japanese soldiers and civilians committed suicide by throwing themselves off the cliffs on the northern tip of the island.
- It is largely unknown that an estimated 110,000 people were there during the Battle of Berlin ; Families - a well-known example is the Reichsarzt-SS Ernst-Robert Grawitz , who killed himself and his family in Potsdam - Babelsberg with hand grenades.
- One of the largest known mass suicides in history occurred with mass suicide in Demmin in May 1945. Around 1,000 people died before and after the Red Army marched in .
- Jonestown massacre : On November 18, 1978 in Jonestown in the Guayan jungle, the majority of Jim Jones' supporters killed themselves with cyanide- containing lemonade . 921 people were found dead, including 276 children and Jones himself. It is believed, however, that many of those killed acted under duress.
- The mass suicide of 61 members of the Sun Templars in Switzerland caused a stir in 1994 . Other followers followed the example of ritual cremation: 16 people died in France in December 1995 and five more died in Canada in March 1997 .
- The ritual suicide of 39 members of Heaven's Gate in Rancho Santa Fe (California, USA) in 1997 was also sensational . In their opinion, the comet Hale-Bopp marked the arrival of an alien spaceship that was supposed to bring the followers to a "higher state" .
- In March 2000, at least 500 sect members died in a mass suicide by the Movement to Restore the Ten Commandments in Uganda. Among the fatalities were 68 children who did not die voluntarily but were murdered.
literature
- Thomas Haenel: Amok and collective suicide. Suicide as a group phenomenon. Verlag NZZ Libro, Zurich, 2012, ISBN 978-3-03823-773-0
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.planet-wissen.de/alltag_gesundheit/tod_und_trauer/selbsttoetung/index.jsp
- ↑ Martin H. Geyer: The post-war period as a time of violence . January 17, 2020 ( bpb.de [accessed June 6, 2020]).
- ↑ Wolfgang Schneider: Mass Suizid 1945: In the end there was cyanide for the people . In: THE WORLD . April 28, 2015 ( welt.de [accessed April 1, 2020]).