NEWPORT BEACH

Amy Biehl, a 26-year-old Fulbright scholar killed in South Africa in 1994, has been honored with one of the first Immortal Chaplains Prizes for Humanity. The awards, presented at the Adath Jeshurun Congregation synagogue in Minnetonka, Minn., honor people who have risked their lives to protect others regardless of race or religion. Biehl’s award was presented by South African archbishop and Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu to her parents, Newport Beach residents Peter and Linda Biehl.

Amy Biehl was in South Africa helping with voter registration for the nation’s first all-races elections and researching what later became the country’s first Bill of Rights. On the day before she was to come home, she was dragged from her car by a mob chanting anti-white slogans. They stabbed and beat her to death.

The awards are named to honor four U.S. Army chaplains--a Jew, a Roman Catholic and two Protestants. In February 1943, they gave their life jackets to soldiers on the torpedoed troop ship Dorchester off Greenland. The chaplains were among 672 who died.