Владимир Герцог: Жизнь и трагическая гибель бразильского журналиста.

Brazilian journalist

Vladimir Herzog (27 June 1937 – 25 October 1975), nicknamed Vlado (a usual Croatian abbreviation for the name Vladimir) by his family and friends, was a Croatian journalist, university professor and playwright of Croatian Jewish origin. He also developed a taste for photography, because of his film projects. Herzog was a member of the Brazilian Communist Party and was active in the civil resistance movement against the military dictatorship in Brazil. In October 1975, Herzog, then editor in chief of TV Cultura, was tortured to death by the political police of the military dictatorship, which later staged his suicide. family who emigrated to Brazil in the early 1940s, to escape Nazi and Ustashe persecution.

Herzog received a bachelor's degree in Philosophy from the University of São Paulo in 1959. After his graduation, he worked as a journalist in the major media outlets in Brazil, notably in the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo. During that period he decided to use "Vladimir" instead of "Vlado" as his first name, because he felt that his real name sounded extremely exotic in Brazil. In the 1970s Herzog became the editor in chief of TV Cultura, a public TV station managed by the São Paulo State government. He also became a journalism professor at the University of São Paulo School of Communication and Arts and at Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado's Journalism course. Alongside this, he developed a career as a playwright, mixing with the artistic and theater Intelligentsia of Brazil. Later in his life, Herzog became active in the civil resistance movement against the military dictatorship in Brazil, as a member of the Brazilian Communist Party (Partido Comunista Brasileiro PCB). As a news director at the TV station, Herzog advocated the responsibility of journalists to society and reported on the first decade of the Brazilian military dictatorship. Military intelligence spies working inside the TV station reported to their handlers that Herzog is "a problem for the military regime."

On 24 October 1975 – when Herzog was already editor in chief of TV Cultura – Brazilian Army agents summoned him to testify about his connections with the then outlawed PCB Party. The following day, Herzog went to the DOI CODI in order to comply with the summons. This meeting however, was actually a ruse to conduct an interrogation of Herzog, wherein he was detained, beaten and tortured. He was arrested with other two journalists, Jorge Duque Estrada Benigno and Rodolfo Konder, who later confirmed the treatment he received.

Later, in a civil lawsuit filed by his widow against the government, a federal tribunal recognized his wrongful death and granted monetary damages to Herzog's family. A documentary by director João Batista de Andrade, titled Herzog 30 anos, was filmed in 2005. In the same year, new photographs of a still living and fully naked Herzog in the prison cell were released on the Internet, authorized by a high ranking military officer in president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's office. At the request of several religious and human rights groups, the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, an independent arm of the Organization of American States, investigated the conflicting circumstances surrounding the death of Vladimir Herzog, and found that the Brazilian junta arrested, tortured and murdered Herzog because of his activities as a journalist. A new death certificate was issued 37 years after Herzog's death to indicate that he died "due to physical torture at the facilities of DOI Codi in the 2nd Army in São Paulo." His previous certificate indicated a possible suicide. Ivo Herzog, son of Vladimir Herzog, delivered petitions for José Maria Marin's removal from the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) and from the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Ivo cited the speeches Marin delivered as congressional representative that praised Sérgio Fleury, who was head of the Department of Political and Social Order (Departamento de Ordem Politica e Social) during Brazil's military dictatorship, and for criticizing Herzog in speeches from 1975.

In 2009, over 30 years after Herzog's death, the Vladimir Herzog Institute was founded. Its aims are to archive material about Herzog, to promote debate about the role of journalists and new media, and to award the Vladimir Herzog Prize for Amnesty and Human Rights to journalists and human rights activists.