Stop the Violence from Ferguson to Gaza: 90-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Arrested in St. Louis
August 20, 2014
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, she 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. Epstein 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 says. "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."
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: We end today’s show with Hedy Epstein. She is a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor who was arrested on Monday in St. Louis when she was part of a protest outside of Governor Jay Nixon’s office. Hedy Epstein is co-founder of the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee and St. Louis branch of Jewish Voice for Peace. In 2011, she 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 joins us here now in Ferguson.
Hedy Epstein, welcome back to Democracy Now!
HEDY EPSTEIN: Good morning, Amy, and thank you for having me on your program.
AMY GOODMAN: We speak to you as tear gas has been in the streets of Ferguson and the Israeli assault on Gaza has just resumed. Your feelings today? And talk about why you got arrested on Monday.
HEDY EPSTEIN: On Monday, several of us gathered downtown, and then we marched to the Wainwright Building, where the office of Governor Nixon is. And we wanted to speak to him and ask him to de-escalate the violence that’s going on in Ferguson. And there were police and security people in front of the building, and they would not let us in. There is a large plaza in front of the building, and so we congregated there. There were some people speaking about their experiences. And at one point, a police lieutenant informed us that the governor is not there—I just learned that he was at the fair—and that his staff is not there, and asked us to disperse. And when we didn’t disperse, within seconds almost, the police arrested those of us who refused to disperse. There were nine of us. I was one of them. We were handcuffed, taken to the paddy wagon and to the nearest police substation.
in full: http://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/20/stop_the_violence_from_ferguson_to
