Vietnam Protester Dies after Self-Immolation

Mar. 26, 1965 - An elderly widow who set herself on fire on a Detroit street corner last week as a protest against United States foreign policy died today.

Mrs. Alice Herz, an 82-year-old pacifist, died in Receiving Hospital of severe burns she suffered March 17 after pouring cleaning fluid over herself and igniting it. She had been rushed to the hospital after passersby beat out the flames.

Mrs. Herz told a fireman on the way to the hospital that her action was “to protest the arms race all over the world.”

“I wanted to burn myself like the monks in Vietnam did,” she was quoted as having said.

The police said they had found a note in Mrs. Herz’s pocketbook protesting “the use of his high office by our President, L.B.J., in trying to wipe out small nations.” They said the note, which also criticized former President Harry S. Truman for similar alleged actions, said: “I wanted to call attention to this problem by choosing the illuminating death of a Buddhist.”Mrs. Herz was born in Germany but fled with her daughter, Helga, to escape the Nazis. They first lived in France, where Mrs. Herz wrote articles for a Swiss newspaper. They lived for months in refugee camps before coming here in 1943. 

Miss Herz, a Detroit librarian, said on Mar. 17 that she did not believe her mother had set herself afire “to satisfy her soul” or as “a kind of solace for depression, but as an attempt to stir action.” 

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