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The following notable people have died by suicide. This includes suicides effected under duress and excludes deaths by accident or misadventure. People who may or may not have died by their own hand, or whose intention to die is disputed, but who are widely believed to have deliberately killed themselves, may be listed.
![Plaque at Jerusalem station about the bombing [he] and Meir Feinstein's suicide. Irgun memorial plaque in Jerusalem.JPG](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Irgun_memorial_plaque_in_Jerusalem.JPG/250px-Irgun_memorial_plaque_in_Jerusalem.JPG)
...according to the authorities, who said there was a .22-caliber pistol in his hand and a note nearby and that he had been despondent recently.
Died. Edwin Howard Armstrong, 63, electronics genius, one of the fathers of modern radio; by his own hand (a jump from his 13th floor apartment) after writing a note to his wife which concluded: "May God help you and have mercy on my soul"; in Manhattan. In 1913 he worked out the regenerative circuit, which outmoded crystal receiving sets with a sensitive vacuum tube system; his superheterodyne circuit, developed in 1918 while serving in France, is still the basic circuit of AM radio. In 1939, he perfected a method for eliminating static (now known as FM). A professor of electrical engineering at Columbia University for the last 20 years, the earnest, driving inventor earned millions of dollars in patent royalties, died a rich man.
Petäjäniemi, Tuulikki (Chairman); Valonen, Kai (LL.M. Secretary, Chief Accident Investigator)
This new terrorist attack came a few hours after two condemned Jews had committed suicide in their cell by detonating explosives against their hearts. The men, Moshe Barazani and Meyer Feinstein, were the first terrorists to make a plea for mercy to the Palestine High Commissioner. They were to have been hanged at dawn today, and made their appeal yesterday, only after relatives had pleaded with them for hours to forsake forsake their "martyrs' role". An official police announcement said that Meyer Feinstein and Moshe Barazini took their lives together in the same cell. The suicides were announced a few hours after 80,000 Jews had been placed under virtual house arrest in a rigid curfew imposed to prevent demonstrations or re-taliation for the carrying out of the death sentences. The death sentence on Feinstein was confirmed on April 18 after he had been convicted of complicity in blowing up of a railway station in Jerusalem in October 1946. Barazani was convicted for carrying a bomb and his death sentence was confirmed on April 17.
Barazani, a Kurdish Jew born in Iraq in 1926, moved to Jerusalem when he was 6 years old and joined the youth division of Lehi (the Stern Gang) at a young age. He distributed propaganda pamphlets and eventually graduated to sabotage operations. On March 9, 1947, British police caught him carrying a grenade meant for the assassination of a British officer in Jerusalem. He was convicted that month for illegal weapons possession and was sentenced to death.
Mrs. Adele Blood Hope, 50 years old, actress and stock-company promoter, shot and fatally wounded herself at her home at 12 Griswald Road on the grounds of the Westchester Country Club here tonight. She died a few hours later at the United Hospital in Port Chester without regaining consciousness. ...
Barazani and Feinstein were dead, their bodies mangled, when the guards rushed in. By a special rabbinical dispensation their bodies were buried in a consecrated section of the cemetery although nominally, as suicides, they would be interred in the unhallowed ground near a stone wall.
Moshe Barazani and Meir Feinstein, who committed suicide in their cells at Jerusalem Prison a few hours before they were to be executed, were buried this morning … Their bodies were placed in a common grave with Aboud Mizrachi, 45, a father of ten, who was killed in Jerusalem last night by British soldiers, who charged he was violating curfew regulations. Although Barazani and Feinstein took their own lives, they were buried in consecrated ground under a dispensation granted by Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog … Rabbi Jacob Goldman … was summoned to the prison a few hours before the executions were scheduled to be carried out, said the two doomed youths were in high spirits … they talked at great length, declaring that they did not consider themselves terrorists or gangsters, but patriots who were dying for the freedom of their people.
This affidavit is sworn in support of an application for a judgment declaring that my said son Meir was born in Jerusalem on the 30th day of July 1929…Brother:Feinstein, Benjamin (April 1, 1947). "Letter to: The President, Military Court Jerusalem" (PDF). www.infocenters.co.il. Karem Quarter, Jerusalem. p. 10.
So far the Prosecutors has tendered the following evidence on the subject: 1. A Birth Certificate issued by the Health Department, Government of Palestine, stating that the age of my brother Meir is 17 years 8 months…
Rabbi Goldman answered that not every instance of ending one's own life is considered suicide by Halacha. For example, King Saul fell over his sword, rather than at the hands of the Philistines. King Saul was praised for this by the Sages.
But he did not die of radiation sickness, even though he spent four months in Chernobyl after the explosion there. Legasov hanged himself in his office on April 27, 1988, almost two years to the day after the reactor accident in present-day Ukraine.
Some commentators assert that Saul erred by taking his own life and becoming a harmful role model for later generations. Others, however, believe that suicide is not prohibited under such circumstances. Rabbi David Kimchi contended that since Saul's death was inevitable (and prophesied by Samuel), it was preferable for him to prevent the national shame of being killed by his enemies. In the 16th century, Rabbi Shlomo Luria argued that Saul committed suicide to prevent many warriors from dying while trying to free him. Based on these precedents, Rabbi Shlomo Goren posited that captured soldiers may commit suicide rather than submit to captivity, especially if they might be tortured to reveal secrets that could endanger other soldiers or the home front. This position was strongly opposed by Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neriah, who argued that suicide cannot be endorsed, as Jewish history teaches that Jews must always stay alive.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ignored ISBN errors (link)Stefan Zweig, Wife End Lives In Brazil; Austrian-Born Author Left a Note Saying He Lacked the Strength to Go on – Author and Wife Die in Compact: Zweig and Wife Commit Suicide
