Portside

After World War II, a teenage Hedy Epstein returned to Germany to search for her parents. At 90, she is still on the move, working for social justice in various parts of the globe.
In the dying days of 1944, the Third Reich was crumbling under the weight of Allied attacks on all fronts. The Soviet Red Army was fast advancing against Japanese forces on its East, as well as on Nazi positions to its West. Sensing the impending defeats, Nazi Commander Heinrich Himmler first ordered the end to gassing, then in January of 1945, ordered the evacuation of all concentration camps into German territory.

When Soviet soldiers arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, they did not find a fraction of the estimated 1.1 million people killed there. Aside from the hundreds of corpses they did discover though were millions of articles of clothing as well as almost 8 tons of human hair - an moribund clue as to what had been taking place at the camp for almost 5 years.

There was more, however. Some 7,500 prisoners who remained at the camp greeted the 322nd Rifle Brigade of the Red Army, who surely were unaware of extent of the horrors that had been taking place on the grounds they had just liberated.

Hedy Epstein was not among those who smiled and posed with the Soviets as they came. She was not at the camp, although her family, including her parents Ella and Hugo Wachenheimer, had been.

Epstein had been born and raised in Germany, and was 8 years old when the Nazi’s came to power in 1933. Her parents recognized the increasing danger posed by Hitler to Jews, and began to look for places they could leave to.

“My parent realized they needed to leave Germany and they were willing to go anywhere in order to get out but there was one place they wouldn’t go and that was Palestine because they were anti-zionists,” Epstein told teleSUR.

Despite their efforts, the emigration restrictions meant the family could not leave.

Germany invaded Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, quickly annexing territory as they had done with Austria. France and Britain caved-in to Hitler’s gunboat diplomacy, with only the USSR offering to support elements of the Czech army and people who rejected the German takeover.

With war looming, the Epsteins decided it was time to make a move, arranging for their daughter to be sent to England on the children's transport, or Kindertransport. By the time war was declared on September 1, 1939, some 10,000 children had taken refuge in the United Kingdom.

Now 14 years old, Hedy joined 500 other children who left Germany May 15. It would be the last time she saw her parents.

The teen stayed in touch with her parents, although correspondence became more difficult once England declared war on Germany.

Corresponding in Exile

“In October of 1940, all the Jews in the part of Germany of where my parents lived were deported to camps in Vichy’s France,” Hedy recalled, speaking of the Camp de Gurs where her family was sent.

After France fell into German hands in May of 1940, Marshal Philippe Petain, France’s ambassador to fascist Spain, was appointed head of state. The Vichy regime naturally collaborated with Nazi plans, including the roundup of Jews and communists.

“They never told me about the horrendous circumstance they lived, that I only found out after the war was over.”

Oddly, Hedy was able to keep in correspondence with her family during this time, as inmates of the French concentration camp were allowed to write one page each week.

For the next two years, Hedy wrote to and received letters from her father and mother, even after they were separated, being sent to other concentration camps in France in 1941 and 1942, respectively.

In August of 1942, Hedy's family members were sent to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. Hedy received a postcard from her mother, dated September 4, 1942, which read, "Traveling to the east ... Sending you a final goodbye." This would be the last letter she received from her parents. However, it would be more than a decade before Hedy found out her parents were sent to the notorious camp.

Search for Family Turns into Search for Justice

After the war, Hedy returned to her native Germany to work in the Nuremberg Medical trial, which tried the Nazi doctors who performed experiments on inmates. She also searched, in vain for her family.

Well after the conflict and the trials, she was contacted by a French organization, which informed her of the date and location where her family had been sent to.

“I didn’t find out until 1956,” Hedy said. “I really was in denial for many years … I knew that a handful of people survived and so I continued to hope that somewhere, somehow I would meet my parents again.”

Hedy transferred her energies into social justice activism, working on fair housing, abortion rights, and antiwar activities as well undertaking speaking engagements. However she maintained hope that her family had been among the few to welcome Soviets into the camp on that January day, and that she would be reunited with them. For years she kept faith, until her need for closure brought her back to her country of origin.

“It was not until September 1980 when I went back to Europe, to visit the various camps where my parents had been, and the last camp I visited was Auschwitz,” Hedy told teleSUR. “When I stood on that spot in Auschwitz where the cattle cars arrived and stopped and the infamous Dr. Mengele made his selection, chose who would be sent to the death chambers and who would live a little a longer … I finally accepted that there was no way my parents or family members had survived.”

Shortly after turning 90, Hedy was arrested in St. Louis in a demonstration over the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson. But for Hedy - who says she was upset about the media focus on her rather than on the issue of the killing of an unarmed black teen - this is just one of the many issues that she puts herself on the line for.

She visited war-torn Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Cambodia in 1989 as a peace activist and has also visited the Israeli-Occupied West Bank five times, and been turned away from visiting Gaza the same amount of times by Israeli authorities.

“It’s part and parcel of my entire political philosophy, when there is something wrong being done I can’t stand idly by … I have to be out there.”

While acknowledging that her health issues affect her ability to be as active as she would like to be, Hedy nonetheless exudes an intensity of conviction which certainly is the reason for her continued dedication to so many issues.

Hedy Epstein did not know at the time of Auschwitz liberation on January 27, 1945, that her family had been in the camp. As someone who had family in the concentration camps, she would have undoubtedly shared in the euphoria that many felt at the news of that day.

Seventy years after Red Army soldiers stormed the Nazi facility, setting free the remaining inmates, Hedy is less enthusiastic, given the state of affairs in the world, including in the areas ravaged by that war which are now seeing a resurgence of a far-right politic as well as the possibility of local conflicts spreading.

“The motto for holocaust survivors is ‘never again,’ and what does that mean for Holocaust Survivors - it usually means never again for Jews. And it should really be never again for anyone, anywhere … remembering has become an important issue, and it is an important, but it has to have a present and future perspective and I don’t see that being addressed.”

This content was originally published by teleSUR.