Vladimir Herzog was a Brazilian journalist and professor who was arrested and tortured by the military police in 1975 because of his supposed communist ties. After he died during the first day of his imprisonment, the military announced that he had committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell block. Several pieces of evidence, including multiple contusions that suggest strangulation, point to the staging of his suicide on the part of the military regime.

Herzog’s death is considered one of the major turning points in Brazil’s slow re-democratization process, as public protest of Herzog’s death demonstrated a widespread resistance to the military regime. A week-long 30,000-person strike was initiated on the part of university students and professors, rejecting the suicide story promulgated by the government, and protesting the tactics employed by the dictatorship to cover up tortures. A week after Herzog’s death, eight thousand people attended an ecumenical service for the late journalist, led by Rabbi Henry Sobel and Presbytarian minister Jaime Wright. Rabbi Sobel, the chief rabbi of a São Paolo synagogue, decided that Herzog should be buried in the center of the cemetery, disavowing the official claims of suicide that in Jewish tradition would have relegated his body to a corner of the cemetery.