(LifeSiteNews) — Eighty-nine-year-old devout Christian Eva Edl, who as a little girl was sent to a communist Yugoslavian death camp, is facing more than a decade in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for her participation in peaceful, prayerful protests outside two Michigan abortion centers.
The concentration camp survivor — who came close to death by starvation and endured squalid conditions — is now standing trial in a Detroit courtroom.
Edl has been arrested dozens of times for pro-life “rescues” in which she has worked to save preborn babies from what she calls abortion “death camps.”
Judge Matthew Leitman, an Obama appointee who is overseeing the trial, said on Tuesday that the trial entailed “very high stakes for both sides” and “could conceivably last a few weeks,” according to a report by The Daily Wire’s Leif Le Mahieu.
“It doesn’t matter how it turns out, God wins in the end,” Edl told The Daily Wire.— Article continues below Petition —Tell Trump to commit to full pardons of jailed pro-lifers, fire FBI officials involved in persecution.
“She also pointed to the cross necklace she had around her neck, saying it was the same necklace she wore when she and her family were rounded up by the forces of Yugoslavian communist dictator Josip Broz Tito because they belonged to the Danube Swabians ethnic group,” Le Mahieu explained.
“When I was indicted, I began to prepare to die there,” Edl told The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan earlier this year. “Right now, I am ambivalent. … I’m doing the best I can to get ready. Haven’t talked to a funeral director yet.”
“I’m just being sensible,” she added. “There’s no guarantee that I survive it.”
“I feel very strongly, because of my background, that human life is sacred,” she told Olohan. “Government does not have the authority to permit what God forbids.”
“And murder is forbidden by God.”
After coming to the United States following her harrowing childhood death camp experiences, Edl was shocked to learn that abortions were being conducted in her new country.
“It bothered me that people would actually think of killing their own children,” she told The Daily Signal.
Edl went on to explain why she has put her own well-being at risk by participating in more than 50 “rescues” outside abortion facilities:
“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? 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.”
She has heard stories that people stood by the roadside and wept as the cattle cars went by. “But that didn’t help us any,” she said.
“So, 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,” the death camp survivor said.
“After all,” she added, “we offer them everything there is, including adoptions. I’ve offered to adopt babies on the spot … we’re standing between the killer and the victim.”
According to Olohan’s report, Edl “has lived through 13 presidents in her lifetime, and she says that (Joe) Biden is the worst of them. She believes that she and other “rescuers” have been targets through the FACE Act because they “are in the way of (the Biden administration’s) agenda.”
In early 2023, Edl and seven others were charged by the Department of Justice (DOJ) with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, also known as the FACE Act.
Edl, along with Calvin Zastrow, Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, Caroline Davis, Joel Curry, Justin Phillips, and Eva Zastrow, allegedly blocked the entrance of an abortion facility in Sterling Heights, Michigan, on August 27, 2020.
Edl and Idoni were also charged with obstructing the entrance of the Women’s Health Clinic in Saginaw, Michigan, on April 16, 2021.
The FACE Act, which was signed into law by Democrat President Bill Clinton in 1994, makes it a crime to intimidate or physically prevent the coming and going of persons seeking the services of abortion clinics.
The late Democrat U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, a self-professed Catholic, was the chief sponsor of the legislation at the time.
Edl, who attempted to talk to Kennedy at the time, said that “instead of talking to us, he had us arrested.”
