Wheels of Justice

Hedy Epstein (née Wachenheimer) of Freiburg, Germany was 8 years old when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany on January 30, 1933. She remembers her parents and other adults talking about Hitler, saying that they hoped he would not gain power in Germany, and then, after he did, hoping that he would not remain in office very long.

On May 18, 1939, the holocaust gathering steam, Hedy went to England on a children’s transport. Hedy’s parents had tried for many years to leave Germany as a family, but were unsuccessful, due to emigration restrictions in various countries around the world. Five hundred children were on this transport, part of the almost 10,000 children that England took in between December 1938 and September 1, 1939, the beginning of World War II. Hedy never saw her family again.

Hedy’s parents and other family members were deported on October 22, 1940 to Camp de Gurs, a concentration camp in what was then Vichy France. Due to an aberration of the war, inmates of the camp in Gurs could correspond with the outside world. Each person was allowed to write one page each week. Hedy’s parents sent her letters for the next two years, but they were careful not to mention the atrocious living conditions they had to endure. They wanted to protect their daughter. The last communication Hedy ever received from her mother was a postcard dated September 4, 1942. The postcard said, “Traveling to the east … Sending you a final goodbye.”

Hedy spent the rest of World War II in England. She went to school and then went to work in a variety of jobs, including a factory producing war materials.

Once the war was over, Hedy went back to Germany to work for the American government—first with the US Civil Censorship Division, and later at the Nuremberg Medical Trial, which tried the doctors accused of performing medical experiments on concentration camp inmates. Part of her reason for returning to Germany was to find her family, but she was unsuccessful.

Hedy came to the United States in May 1948. Her only living relatives were an uncle and an aunt who had emigrated to the US in early 1938. Once here, she worked in a variety of jobs. Although she did not realize it at the time, many of those jobs were part of her quest to find her parents and her family. Soon, Hedy became active professionally and personally in the causes of civil and human rights and social justice. Some of her causes have included fair housing, abortion rights, and antiwar activities. As a peace delegate, Hedy journeyed to Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Cambodia.

Hedy Epstein brought her peace witness to Palestine winter 2003; in her own words: “In Bethlehem, I saw a Caterpillar bulldozer ripping up centuries-old olive trees to clear a path for rolled razor wire and antitank trenches dividing the town where Jesus was born.

In Qalqilia, I was dwarfed by Israel’s separation wall rising more than 25 feet. In President George W. Bush’s phrase, it “snakes in and out of the West Bank.” It keeps farmers from their fields and hems in 50,000 residents on all sides.

In Masha, I joined a demonstration against this wall. I saw a red sign warning ominously of “MORTAL DANGER” to any who dare cross this fence. Then I saw Israeli soldiers aiming at unarmed Israeli and international protesters. I saw blood pouring out of Gil Na’amati, a young Israeli whose first public act after completing his military service was to protest against this wall. I saw shrapnel lodged in the leg of Anne Farina, one of my traveling companions from St. Louis. And I thought of Kent State and Jackson State, where National Guardsmen opened fire in 1970 on protesters against the Vietnam War.

Near Der Beilut, I saw the Israeli police turn a water cannon on our nonviolent protest. And I remembered Birmingham, Ala., in 1963 and wondered why a democratic society responds to peaceable assembly by trying literally to drown out the voice of our protest.”

Hedy Epstien is a member of the Speakers Bureau of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center and the Speakers Bureau of the Missouri Humanities Council. Her writings have been published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis Jewish Light, Frost Illustrated of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and others. In addition, Hedy’s autobiography was published in May 1999 by Unrast-Verlag, a German company. The book, titled Erinnern ist nicht genug: Autobiographie von Hedy Epstein (“Remembering Is Not Enough: The Autobiography of Hedy Epstein”), is available in German. The book, written by Hedy, covers her entire life and her experiences. Her story is featured in the Academy Award winning documentary, “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport.”