This is not Bruce Mayrock

On the 29th of May 1969 a young student called Bruce Baruch Mayrock set himself on fire on the lawn of the United Nations headquarters in New York.
A sign he left on the grass said: “You must stop genocide – please save 9 million Biafrans.” and “Peace is where there is an absence of fear of any kind.”.
He died a day later of is injuries, having given his life to get attention to the horrible situation in Biafra.

He had been protesting against the situation in Biafra and had written letters to politicians, even the president but according to his rabbi he felt that no one was listening and nobody was doing anything.
Many people living in that region have never forgotten this sacrifice and see him as a hero to this day.

Unfortunately when sharing their appreciating for Bruce they often use the wrong images.

Warning, some of the photos shown in this article are difficult to look at.

The most common photo shared with the claim that it shows Bruce Mayrock is this one:

But the photo used for this and many similar pictures does not show Bruce Mayrock but American chess player Joshua Waitzkin (born December 4, 1976) who is still very much alive.
The photo was taken at a tournament in 2006, the original upload can be found here.

Mr. Waitzkin is quite well known, the book and film ‘Searching for Bobby Fisher‘ (1993) with among others Ben Kingsley and Laurence Fishburne, was based on his life.

Unfortunately so many people believed that this is what Mr. Mayrock looked like that they not only used his image for their social media pictures but even for signs, art and statues, like the ones meant for the Bruce Mayrock Memorial Centre in Nnewi, Anambra State, Nigeria.

Another, more gruesome, image that is sometimes shared with the claim that it shows Mayrock is this one of a man on fire, as you can see here in the top right:

Here are several other photos of this incident:

I haven’t been able to confirm the story behind this incident, the pictures are all over the internet with many different claims about what’s going on.
It’s been online since at least 2004 (link) and may show the self-immolation of a refugee outside the Malaysian headquarters of the UN refugee agency in Kuala Lumpur
But the photos are clearly not from the 1960s and obviously do not show Bruce Mayrock.

It took a while but I did eventually find photos of the real Bruce Mayrock.
You can find several of him here on Andrea Fortunoff’s website, she knew Bruce personally.
This portrait below though comes from the Yeshivah of Flatbush Joel Braverman High School’s fiftieth anniversary journal from 2018 (link):

Sources:

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Disclaimer;
Picture(s) found online, used for (re-)educational and journalistic purposes only, it falls under ‘fair use’.
I do not own the copyrights to these images, I only share them here for educational purposes to try and make sure the real story behind it becomes known and people will stop spreading false information.
If the copyright owner objects to the sharing here, kindly contact me and I shall alter the article.
If you’re interested in using any of the images here get in touch with the copyright owners mentioned in the article.
Feel free to contact me with questions.