Hedy Epstein, 90-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor, Arrested During Michael Brown Protest

[Cali_Democrat]

Source: Huffington Post

Hedy Epstein, a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor was arrested on Monday during unrest over the death of Michael Brown, KMOV reports.

Epstein, who aided Allied forces in the Nuremberg trials, was placed under arrest in downtown St. Louis "for failing to disperse." 8 others were also arrested.

"I've been doing this since I was a teenager. I didn't think I would have to do it when I was ninety," Epstein told The Nation during her arrest. "We need to stand up today so that people won't have to do this when they're ninety."

Epstein is currently an activist and a vocal supporter of the Free Gaza Movement.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/18/hedy-epstein-arrested-ferguson-holocaust-_n_5689822.html

[LloydS of New London]

1. A woman who knows what the stakes are

, Hedy!

[RufusTFirefly]

2. Here also. With pics as well as 83 recs and counting

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025407467

[freshwest]

4. Just gave it the 84th Rec. Thanks for posting the link, never would have seen it.

[Rhiannon12866]

3. I saw her in the news footage and my immediate reaction was WTF?!

I didn't know who she was then, however, just that she looked like the last person the police would want to arrest. Yikes!

[freshwest]

5. Her history of activism started many years ago:

Hedy Epstein (born 15 August 1924), née Wachenheimer, is a German-born American political activist known for her support of the Palestinian cause through the International Solidarity Movement and for her background as a Holocaust survivor.[1] Born in Freiburg to a Jewish family, she was rescued from Nazi Germany by the Kindertransport in 1939. She immigrated to the United States in 1948, and she currently resides in St. Louis, Missouri.[2]

Epstein was born to a Jewish family in Freiburg, Germany, and in 1939 fled Nazi persecution via the Kindertransport to England. All but two of her family were killed at Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust. During World War II she worked in munitions factories and joined a group of left-wing German Jewish refugees who hoped to re-introduce democracy in their homeland – "the foundation of my political education which still stands me in good stead today," she says.

Some 60 years later, she was interviewed about this experience for the film Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport.[3][4]

After the war, Epstein worked with the Allied occupying forces in Germany, including working on the Doctors' Trial at Nuremberg. In 1948 she immigrated to New York City, then moved to Minneapolis, and then to St. Louis, Missouri.

There, she took up activism for affordable housing, the pro-choice movement, and the antiwar movement.[3][5][6] In 1982, news reports of the Sabra and Shatila massacres committed by a Lebanese Phalangist militia with the complicity of the IDF, during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, "horrified" Epstein. Her reaction was to take a different perspective on the Arab–Israeli conflict; she began to express opposition to Israel's military policies.

In 2001, she founded a St. Louis chapter of the Women in Black, an anti-war group that originally focused on Israel's occupation. In 2003 she traveled to the West Bank to work with the International Solidarity Movement. She has returned once a year since, claiming to "CounterPunch" that she had been strip searched and cavity searched in 2004 by guards at Ben Gurion International Airport.[3][6][7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Epstein

[Uncle Joe]

6. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Cali_Democrat.

[defacto7]

7. K & R

[Cha]

8. Mahalo Cali

to Hedy Epstein For Michael Brown

[Enthusiast]

9. Kicked and recommended!

Wow!

[malthaussen]

10. Obviously, the St. Louis cops have no concept of "public relations."

This one is going to play really well.

-- Mal