A 90-year-old German Jew is likely the oldest person to have been arrested while protesting and demanding justice for Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., New York Daily News reported.
Hedy Epstein, a German Jew who fled to England as a child before World War II started, and whose parents and other relatives were murdered by the Nazis at the Auschwitz death camp, has been protesting against injustice since she was a teen. But it was on Monday that she had the bruises on her arm to prove it.
"The police officers weren't violent or anything like that, but they put the handcuffs on me pretty tight," the St. Louis grandmother told The Daily News on Tuesday - a day after she was arrested. "I have been arrested before," she said. "The bruises will go away."
Protesting Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon's decision to send the National Guard into Ferguson, Epstein said she was in downtown St. Louis on Monday. "We were hoping to get him to de-escalate the violence," said Epstein. "We believe they are inciting the peaceful demonstrators to become violent."
However, Epstein said she "hadn't given a thought to being arrested."
According to NYDN, just before the protest march kicked off, Epstein said "somebody announced there would be arrests and they asked me if I was willing to take that risk."
"I said yes," she said. "It was very spontaneous."
But after they marched over to a government building and began demanding to speak with Nixon, she said the cops said no and threatened to arrest them if they didn't scram. "In the past my heart would pound a mile a minute," she said. "This time I was very calm. The police told us to move and we refused. So they arrested us."
The officers treated them professionally, she said. "They have a job to do and they did what they had to do," she said. "They handcuffed us, drove us to the station, and charged us with failure to disperse."
Epstein, who lived in New York when she first emigrated to the U.S. in 1948, said she has protested against what she sees as injustice "since I was a teenager."
"I didn't think I would still be doing this when I was 90," she said. "But we have to stand up for what's right."
Most recently, Epstein has taken part in numerous protests against the Israeli bombing of Palestinians in Gaza.
