Stop the Violence from Ferguson to Gaza
Ninety-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Arrested in St. Louis
HAVANA TIMES – Just days after her 90th birthday, Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein was arrested Monday in St. Louis when she was part of a protest outside Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon’s office. Epstein was born in Germany and left in 1939 on a Kindertransport to England. Her parents died in Auschwitz. Epstein is a co-founder of the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee and St. Louis branch of Jewish Voice for Peace.
In 2011, Epstein was part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and was a passenger on the U.S.-flagged ship, The Audacity of Hope. Over the years, she has made many solidarity trips to the West Bank. She criticizes the police handling of protests in Ferguson. “It’s the same kind of violence that I’ve observed when I was in the Israeli-occupied Palestine-” Epstein adds: “I know what it feels like to be discriminated against, to be oppressed, and I can’t stand idly by when I see there are problems.”
The important point is that Hedy Epstein along with all Americans and unlike Cubans should be free to demonstrate under the US Constitution – but the stupidity of the St. Louis police in arresting her only helps to promote her views and cause. Americans who criticize Cuba for taking similar action against the Ladies in White should think deeply about where the “Home of the free” is heading!
On the other hand in the US Epstein was able to form an organization with views contrary to those of her government – such action is against the law in Cuba.
It is astounding that a survivor of Auschwitz would actively support an organization, Hamas, which has publicly declared their intention to finish the Holocaust.