Elderly concentration camp survivor, pro-life advocate faces trial, prepares for death if imprisoned

A cross necklace around the neck of a senior defendant holds special significance for its owner, who wore it 80 years earlier as she was removed to a communist concentration camp in Yugoslavia.

“God supplies,” 89-year-old Eva Edl said in an interview with The Daily Wire concerning the hefty legal fees over her trial, which takes place this week at the Theodore Levin courthouse in Detroit.

If convicted, Edl and other co-defendants face prison time and fines up to hundreds of thousands of dollars on federal conspiracy charges over pro-life protests near abortion clinics, according to a 2023 indictment.

However, Edl views her pro-life activism as part of a human-rights mission related to her own survival and escape to the United States. 

“We are doing what we are condemning others for [not doing],” Edl says she told her now-deceased husband in 1988, when she joined protesters outside an abortion clinic in Atlanta. “This is what people should have done for us.” 

‘Our whole people was destroyed’ 

Edl was born to a family of Danube Swabians or “Donauschwaben,” the name given to an ethnic group of German-speaking settlers in an area spanning present-day Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia. 

After World War II, the Danube Swabians faced intense hostility over their cultural heritage. The Yugoslavian communist leader Josip Broz, also known as Tito, ordered them to be rounded up and sent to brutal death camps, where an estimated 250,000 of them died. 

“Our whole people was destroyed,” Edl said. “We hadn’t done anything wrong, as far as I know.” 

Edl was only 9 when she was shipped off to a “primitive” camp in a cattle car without food or water. 

“We were packed body to body, and being a small child, I could hardly breathe.” 

Her only item of clothing was the dress she was wearing, which meant she could never wash it throughout the ordeal. 

“We had diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid, and rats and anything you could imagine, and we had no toilet facilities to contain all that,” Edl explained. “We had an outhouse. Well, how do you have masses of people with diarrhea just go to one outhouse? So, you know what happened. And filth and disease went rampant.” 

The genocide of the Danube Swabians continued unchecked without outside intervention. 

“We were not liberated by any army, which would have been able to document the atrocities,” Edl said. 

Edl’s mother had been forced into slave labor, but she risked death repeatedly to escape and find Edl and her sister, still languishing in the death camp. Edl arrived in the United States in 1955. 

Now she is preparing for the possibility she will die in prison if convicted of federal conspiracy charges. 

“When I was indicted, I began to prepare to die there,” she said. “Right now, I am ambivalent. … There’s no guarantee that I survive it.” 

‘Novel prosecution’ 

Although Edl has been arrested before for her pro-life activism, she has never faced prison time until now. 

The Biden administration is using what the Daily Wire calls a “novel prosecution technique” to bring felony conspiracy charges against abortion protesters related to the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. 

“The FACE Act is a 1994 law that supposedly protects both abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers, but has been heavily enforced by President Joe Biden’s DOJ against pro-lifers since the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade,” wrote Mary Margaret Olohan for The Daily Signal. 

Biden’s critics point out the law’s uneven application, as criminals attacking hundreds of pregnancy resource centers have never been charged. 

“The Biden administration is using the FACE Act to give pro-life activists and senior citizens lengthy prison terms for nonviolent offenses and protests – all while turning a blind eye to the violence, arson, and riots conducted on behalf of ‘approved’ leftist causes,” said Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. 

“Unequal enforcement of the law is a violation of the law, and men and women who try to expose the horrors of abortion are being unjustly persecuted for their motivations.” 

Another incident involving an elderly pro-life activist occurred in June when Paulette Harlow, 75, was sentenced to 24 months in prison despite chronic health conditions. 

“I’m not sure that they would be able to take care of all the things my husband takes care of full time,” she said concerning prison facilities. “I’m in pain all the time, and I can’t really take a lot of pain medication because of my liver, and so, I have to be very careful with medications. And there’s a lot of times I’m not able to sleep, and I have to sleep during the day, and I don’t know how that would work with the noise of the prison.” 

However, Harlow finds comfort for an unknown future in her Christian faith, just like Edl. 

“I know that wherever I go, God’s going with me, and he’s going before me, and he’ll be with me, and he’ll protect me, and he’ll fill me with joy, like he did in the courtroom.” 

‘God wins in the end’ 

All her protests at abortion clinics have been peaceful and without violence, Edl says.  

The Justice Department has refused to comment regarding its charges against her, but the indictment reads she “refused to move and encouraged the other defendants to continue blocking access” to the clinic after being warned of arrest. 

“You can arrest us, you can do whatever you want, but I will be back, wherever there is a clinic open,” the indictment quotes Edl as saying. 

Edl believes her actions are justified in trying to save the lives of babies facing abortion. Referring to her own experience being transported to the concentration camp, she heard that people stood by the roadside and wept as the cattle cars passed. 

“But that didn’t help us any,” she said. 

“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? 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.” 

In the same way, Edl believes her protests serve a crucial role in giving unborn children a chance at life.  

“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.” 

During a gathering at Christ Community Church on Tuesday in Roseville, Michigan, Edl prayed for God to be “glorified” and the nation to be healed through this trial. 

“It doesn’t matter how it turns out,” she said. “God wins in the end.”