The conditions of being a member of the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party) and being a journalist are often cited as causes for the dictatorship to arrest — whose death, after torture sessions at the DOI-Codi headquarters, in São Paulo, turns 50 this Saturday (25).
If both characteristics seem to have been predominant in the persecution of Vlado, there is at the same time another aspect that has been little explored and which may have contributed to his arrest and murder: anti-Semitism.
Born on June 27, 1937 in Osijek (in what was then Yugoslavia, now Croatia), Herzog moved with his family to Brazil at the age of 9, in 1946. He became a naturalized Brazilian. He was Jewish, but he was never religious.
The dictatorship invented that Herzog had committed suicide, a hoax that would be unmasked starting with the refusal to bury him in a separate location, as required by Jewish tradition in relation to suicides.
One of the elements that reinforces the thesis of anti-Semitism as a factor to be considered in Herzog’s death is the stance of the DOI-Codi commander in 1975, the then lieutenant colonel Audir Maciel, revealed in an interview years later.
“Today, no one knows that he was a journalist like any other. A figure of great renown was associated with him. The Vladimir Herzog Award — for a Jew, stateless, who was not even Brazilian”, said Maciel to the “Oral History of the Army” project, in a volume published in 2003.
Maciel’s interview is mentioned by journalist Marcelo Godoy, special reporter for the newspaper “O Estado de S. Paulo”, in his books “A Casa da Vovó”, about the history of DOI-Codi, winner of the Jabuti prize in 2015, and about the saga of a communist militant who became a spy in the service of the military.
In “Dogs”, Godoy lists more elements about the dictatorship’s anti-Semitism. As a statement by the commander of the 2nd Army, General Ednardo D’Ávila Mello, —originally quoted by in “Meu Querido Vlado”— during an audience with Cardinal Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns. The military suggested a pact against pornography and said that magazines of this type were published by Jewish publishers.
Or a 1976 report from the DOI —after Herzog’s death, therefore— reporting that Army officers were “repeatedly questioned by comrades in uniform about the presence of Jews in communist organizations” and that there was a disagreement between agents of repression and superiors in this regard.
According to the document, it was argued that “Jews, known worldwide as elements focused exclusively on finance, in search of avid and incessant profit, would be the last people to espouse Marxist ideology.” Agents of repression disagreed: “It turns out that the Western media are in the hands of Jewish organizations, interfering in all communities and in the cultural process of each country.”
The report — analyzed by sociology professor at UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) Michel Gherman — lists 56 communist Jews, says that “the risk of having them in the country only increases in these times”, which “should be a cause for concern […] that the communist Jew exists, being infiltrated” and “acting in all sectors of Brazilian society” and that “the assumption of communist Jews acting as spies for the benefit of Iron Curtain countries cannot be underestimated”.
Godoy remembers the historical roots of anti-Semitism in the Brazilian Army. “During the Estado Novo, Jews were barred from the Realengo Military School. There were those who were baptized to be able to pursue a military career, like Moyses Chaon. He became an aspirant in 1941 and was in the FEB as one of the 60 Jewish soldiers who made up the Brazilian Expeditionary Force.”
Although it refers to “strong indications that anti-Semitism was present in the country’s security community [durante a ditadura]beyond what would be expected in the society of those years”, the journalist finds it difficult to answer whether such a state of affairs could have given rise to an order to weigh in against Herzog.
“It would be necessary to get to know Pedro Mira Grancieri better [o agente que o torturou Vlado]. And to know if the fact that Herzog was Jewish made him more cruel in his actions that Saturday [dia do assassinato]. Or what is the effect of Maciel’s thoughts on his subordinates at this specific point.”
One of the great Brazilian journalists of recent decades, the also Jewish Alberto Dines (1932-2018) always suspected this possibility. In one, he stated: “[…] I also knew that the death of a Jewish journalist was not random, that is, it was a premonition of mine […]. I don’t have proof, but I can’t separate the fact that I knew he was Jewish, I mean, there is some connection.”
In the same conversation, journalist Rodolfo Konder (1938-2014), arrested and tortured by the dictatorship at DOI-Codi together with Herzog, added: “[…] Vlado was Jewish and fascists are always anti-Semitic. So, I think one of the reasons why they lost control and hit with hatred was because Vlado was Jewish too. That was one of the reasons.”
In an article entitled “Jews, militancy and resistance to dictatorship”, Dines cited some Jewish men and women who were victims of repression, such as Ana Rosa Kucinski, Mauricio and André Grabois (father and son), Chael Schreier, Gelson Reicher, Pauline Philipe Reischtuhl and Yara Iavelberg — in addition to Vladimir Herzog.
