Solange Hertz
Nellie Solange Strong Hertz was an American traditionalist Catholic author, who published almost two dozen books on Catholicism, and wrote for magazines The Remnant and America. Her writings were strongly conservative and defended topics such as capital punishment, monarchy, and gender roles. She was also the first woman to ever be offered a scholarship to Georgetown University, though she instead elected to attend the American University, at the age of 15.
In 1965, she received national media and federal attention during the Vietnam War when her husband, Gustav Crane Hertz, was kidnapped by Viet Cong guerrillas in Saigon. The highest ranking prisoner ever captured by the Viet Cong, Gustav's kidnapping spurred several failed government negotiations to rescue him, including a proposed prisoner swap that was rejected by the White House. Political figures including Robert F. Kennedy, Cherif Guellal, Abba P. Schwartz, Nguyễn Hữu Thọ, and Norodom Sihanouk were all directly involved with the case, with several of them having directly communicated with Solange. In 1967, following two years of negotiations, all attempts at rescue ultimately failed when Gustav perished from malaria in captivity. Gustav's body was finally returned to Solange and buried in their hometown after three decades.
Early life and education
Nellie Solange Strong was born in Washington, D.C., on January 1, 1920, the only child to John Logan Strong and Andree Laurans Strong. At age 15, Solange graduated from Western High School in Washington, D.C., as the class valedictorian. She was the first female recipient of the school's scholarship to the all-male Georgetown University. Solange had unexpectedly won the scholarship with an essay about the U.S. Constitution, that she had written in 1935 as a senior at Western High School. Since Georgetown was all-male, the scholarship was transferred to American University, where she attended instead. At American University, Solange graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Classical Language on June 5, 1939, at the age of 19.Life and career
Family
Solange married her classmate, Gustav Crane Hertz, in 1938. The two fell in love in her senior year there, with her remarking that, "I was supposed to be a teacher, for which I had no aptitude, so I got married". The couple settled in Leesburg, Virginia, where they bought their home, an old historic farmhouse. Solange and Gustav went on to have a total of five children together: Lydia Logan Hertz, Gustav Jr., Stephen, Christina, and Crane. At the time of her death in 2015, she was survived by four of her five children, as well as 19 grandchildren, and 50 great-grandchildren.Vietnam war
Solange Hertz's husband, Gustav, was the chief public administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s mission in Vietnam. Having been assigned the position in 1963, he traveled all over South Vietnam, teaching civil administration across the war-torn country. The Hertz family resided for some time in Vietnam, enjoying the local Vietnamese way of life. Solange initially preferred living among the Vietnamese to American life, despite occasional Viet Cong terrorism. On this, she explained that "I'm not the nervous type."On the afternoon of Tuesday, Feb. 2, 1965, at about 2:30 P.M., Gustav went out for a leisurely motorcycle ride in Saigon and disappeared. At the time of his kidnapping, Gustav was the highest-ranking prisoner to be taken captive by the Viet Cong. By early that evening, Solange Hertz reported her husband missing, but any attempt to search for him was initially delayed. With it being the Lunar New Year, the Viet Cong had previously observed a truce over the holidays. Additionally, no other U.S. civilian advisor had been kidnapped by the Viet Cong before Gustav, leading authorities to doubt that he had actually been captured.
Hertz's frantic calls to U.S. military authorities eventually lead to the opening of an investigation. It took two days after his disappearance before U.S. authorities had even bothered to travel up the street to look for him. The pace of the search for Gustav was forcibly sped up 40 hours after his disappearance, when Presidential Assistant McGeorge Bundy had arrived in Saigon for an inspection visit. Bundy was informed that "our Public Administration guy has been kidnapped", which accelerated the search for Gustav. State Department officials had acknowledged at the time that any further investigation into Gustav's disappearance would likely be a waste, as too much time had passed before they started searching for him. One official stated that "Within four minutes after the V.C. got Hertz, they had hidden him where we never could have found him."
10 days after his disappearance, on February 12, Hertz received an envelope in the mail, containing two letters. The first was a handwritten letter from Gustav, stating he would be returning home within a week. The handwriting matched her husband's, but the letter addressed her "Solange", rather than "Nellie", which he had always called her. The second letter was written in Vietnamese, and was signed by a man who revealed himself as a representative of the Viet Cong in the village of Thu Duc, which was located five miles north of Saigon. The letter gave Hertz instructions on what to do to discuss the conditions of her husband's release, but gave a date set for a meeting four days before she received the letter in the mail. With the letter having taken too long to reach her, Hertz was unable to follow the Viet Cong's instructions, with the first letter marking the last time Hertz ever heard from her husband.
Given that kidnapping of a civilian prisoner by the Viet Cong was unprecedented, the U.S. government had no real conduct to follow. Hertz also tried enlisting the help of Catholic clergy as well as the French. Ultimately though, all attempts at negotiation failed. Hertz returned to Leesburg, Virginia with her children in March, so that closer proximity to Washington D.C. would allow her to apply pressure to the State Department and White House for Gustav's release. Here, her brother-in-law, Burke Hertz, assisted her in pressuring the state department to rescue Gustav. Soon after, the Saigon government arrested and condemned a terrorist, Nguyen Van Thai, to death for the March 30 bombing of the U.S. embassy. The Viet Cong then used Gutav's life as a threat of retaliatory execution if Thai was killed. Thai's execution was postponed to spare Gustav's life, though this ran counter to the South Vietnamese desire to see Thai executed for his crimes. In 1965, Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ came into office and vowed to carry out all death sentences against those on death row, including Thai. U.S. administrative officials managed to convince Ky to exempt Thai, for the sake of Gustav. Meanwhile, several U.S. government attempts were made for the release of her husband, and an unsuccessful prisoner exchange led by then-Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy attempted to help the Hertz family after members of Congress were approached by Solange for help. Kennedy, through an Algerian ambassador, came into contact with a one time guerilla fighter named Huynh Van Tam.
Tam informed the Algerian ambassador, who informed Kennedy in turn, that the Viet Cong would agree to a prisoner swap: Gustav Hertz for Nguyen Van Thai. Kennedy referred the prisoner swap proposal to the White House, who rejected it on the grounds that a civilian was not of equal value as a convicted terrorist and that the U.S. should not negotiate with the Viet Cong in such a fashion, among other reasons. The Hertz family was bewildered and angered at the White House's rejection of the deal, with Solange stating that her husband was being sacrificed to "maintain the fake image that the U.S. had absolutely nothing to do with the politics and government of South Vietnam." Cambodian Chief of State Norodom Sihanouk, also provided some contact to the Hertz family. In July 1966, Sihanouk provided a letter to Abba Scwartz, a lawyer working on the case, stating that Hertz was being treated "humanely" and was in "rather good health." Later unsuccessful attempts were made, including a rejected ransom of about $20,000 in 1966, though all efforts ultimately fell through. Sihanouk later told Solange that the Viet Cong informed him that Gustav had died in captivity, from malaria on September 24, 1967, at the age of 49.
Initially, Gustav's kidnapping drew only a small amount of media attention. However, in June 1967, the Viet Cong Liberation Radio announced Gustav had been executed; drawing far more attention to the case. Some of the Hertz family clutched at hope for a short time after this radio message, as the surname 'Hertz' had been incorrectly pronounced, leading them to believe he may still be alive. However, Gustav's brother, Burke Hertz, admitted that the broadcast "may be their way of finally telling us." Shortly after the radio broadcast, Solange Hertz was informed through intermediaries that Gustav had not been executed, but actually had died of malaria in a North Vietnamese prison.
In 1973, Gustav's name appeared on a list delivered to the U.S. government of Americans who had perished in Vietnamese captivity.
Three decades later, a long search for his remains by the State Department concluded following a successful DNA match, due in part to the lobbying of Burke Hertz. Solange Hertz later buried her husband in 2002 in the cemetery of the family church, St. John the Apostle in Leesburg, Virginia.