Survivor of communist concentration camp makes peace with dying in US prison over peaceful pro-life protest

A Christian pro-life activist who survived a communist concentration camp in post-war Yugoslavia is now making peace with the possibility she may not outlast the Biden administration.

Eva Edl, 88, has long been familiar with the consequences of dehumanization. After the Nazi forces were routed in Europe and the war at large was coming to an end, Edl, not yet 10 years old, was tossed into one of communist dictator Josip "Tito" Broz's concentration camps in Yugoslavia along with thousands of other Danube Schwabians who had been collectively branded as Nazi collaborators by Tito's communist Partisans and targeted for their German ethnic backgrounds.

Edl told WJBF-TV, "We were considered to be non-human. It was just permission for torture and killing by the government."

In camp Gakowa, Edl indicated she ended up losing all of the skin on her legs and was hobbled by sores. "People gagged when they came near me," she said. "The flies and the fleas and the lice, and the bed bugs just loved this festering body."

Edl and her remaining family members ultimately managed to escape into Austria. After spending several years in refugee camps, they made it to the United States where she now might die in prison for defending the lives of the biggest cohort of dehumanized people, slaughtered by the tens of millions globally every year.

The Biden Department of Justice charged Eva Edl, 88, and 10 other pro-life activists in October 2022 for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act — a law ratified in 1994 by former President Bill Clinton. The pro-life activists had staged a peaceful protest inside the Carafem abortion clinic in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, on March 5, 2021, singing and praying in support of those persons who had and would be slain deeper inside the abattoir.

Earlier this month, Edl and the final four of the 11 pro-life activists were convicted. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Tennessee indicated the octogenarian faces up to six months in prison, five years of supervised released, and up to $10,000 in fines. It appears she was spared what could otherwise have been over a decade in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 because of the strictly nonviolent nature of her perceived offense.

Edl recently told the Daily Signal in an interview, "When I was indicted, I began to prepare to die there."

"Right now, I'm ambivalent," she continued. "I'm doing the best I can to get ready. Haven't talked to a funeral director yet."

"I'm just being sensible," added Edl. "There's no guarantee that I survive it."

Edl explained to the Daily Signal that her activism started when the issue was brought to her attention during an English course in 1968.

"I didn't know what [abortion] meant," she said. "I tried to speak up in that subject, but I must have done a very bad job because I don't think I convinced the person that I was speaking with. And after that, I just brought the subject up all the time because it bothered me that people would actually think of killing their own children."

She made clear to her husband that inaction was unacceptable.

"We are doing what we are condemning others for," Edl recalled telling her husband. "This is what people should have done for us."

Edl began actively protesting abortion and staging rescues in the late 1980s, which landed her in jail even before Clinton signed the FACE Act into law.

Despite her conviction earlier this month, Edl maintains her actions were justified, certain that such protests can spare babies' lives today just as similar protests could have saved multitudes of lives in the mid-20th century.

"When we were rounded up to be killed, we were placed in cattle cars, and our train was headed toward the extermination camp. What if citizens of my country would have overcome their fear, and a number of them stood on those railroad tracks between the gate of the entrance to the death camp and the train?" said Edl. "The train would have to stop. And while the guards on those trains would be busy rounding up the ones that were in front of the train, another group could have come in, pried open our cattle car and possibly set us free, but nobody did."

"When we place our bodies between the woman and the clinic, we buy time to get our sidewalk counselors the opportunity to speak with women, and hopefully open their hearts with love for their babies and let their babies live," said Edl.

Tommy Valentine, the director of accountability at CatholicVote, suggested in an op-ed Monday, "It is unquestionable that Eva and her pro-life compatriots' prosecutions are intended to send a message. The FBI and Department of Justice have prosecuted nonviolent pro-life offenders with the FACE Act, while turning a blind eye to the violent, ongoing and terrifying attacks on other institutions protected by the FACE Act: churches and pregnancy help centers."

Valentine noted that while Edl is likely headed to prison, the Biden DOJ has "failed to federally prosecute a single one of the more than 400 egregious FACE Act violations against Catholic Churches since May 2020, or to meaningfully address the 90 attacks on pregnancy resource centers across the nation since May 2022."

Last year, Republicans Rep. Chip Roy (Texas) and Sen. Mike Lee (Utah) proposed legislation that would repeal the FACE Act.

"Free Americans should never live in fear of their government targeting them because of their beliefs. Yet, Biden's Department of Justice has brazenly weaponized the FACE Act against normal, everyday Americans across the political spectrum, simply because they are pro-life," Roy said in a statement.

Lee stated, "Joe Biden's DOJ has weaponized this constitutionally dubious law against pro-life sidewalk counselors while failing to protect pregnancy centers and churches from arson, vandalism, and violence. It's time to repeal the FACE Act once and for all."

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