"Exile" with Mandy Patinkin Returns for Season 3

Leo Baeck Institute’s critically acclaimed EXILE podcast, hosted by Mandy Patinkin, returns with a new season on Tuesday, July 16, 2024. Season 3 brings six more untold accounts of unimaginable perseverance, sourced from the Leo Baeck Institute archive.

Listen to the latest episode

“When everything is taken away,” Tony and Emmy-award winner Mandy Patinkin asks, “then what?”

Each episode of the show answers Patinkin’s question with a new, inspiring, and illuminating account of Jewish lives under the shadow of fascism. Produced by the Leo Baeck Institute and Antica Productions, the narratives of the odds-defying individuals profiled this season exemplify resilience, creativity, and the power of unlikely friendships. Among many fascinating figures, listeners will meet:

• Lily Renee Wilhelm, an inventive European refugee who became a trailblazing comic book illustrator in New York,
• Leo Fuks, a vaudeville performer who found his way to Hollywood under the name Jackie Gerlich and into The Wizard of Oz (as the Red Munchkin in the “Lollipop Guild”) and,
• Samson Schames, an indomitable artist in exile who used the debris of war –rusty nails, melted glass, paintbrushes made from bits of wood and tufts of his own hair – to create powerful paintings and mosaics that hang today in the Jewish Museum Frankfurt.

“Each individual we profile demonstrates resilience, courage, and the power of the human spirit in the face of oppression and war,” said Dr. Markus Krah, the John H. Slade Executive Director of the Leo Baeck Institute. “EXILE is a monument to their contributions.” Patinkin, speaking at the Center for Jewish History in 2023, called his work on EXILE “an extraordinary gift.”

EXILE is the winner of two Signal Awards in 2023: the Silver award in the General Documentary Category for "Love in the Time of Fascism” and the Gold award in the General History Category for “From Refugee to Radical.” Previous episodes of EXILE include astonishing stories of average citizens and untold moments of historical figures, such as Albert Einstein.

Listeners can find episodes of Exile here and on Spotify, Apply Podcasts, and many other podcast platforms. This season of six new episodes begins July 16, 2024 and will be published weekly on Tuesdays, with more to come in the fall of 2024.

Season 3 of Exile is made possible in part by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance and the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) represents world Jewry in negotiating for compensation and restitution for victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs. Among its activities, the Claims Conference administers compensation funds, funds social welfare services, and allocates funds to preserve the memory and lessons of the Shoah. For more information, please visit www.claimscon.org.

The EVZ Foundation's mission is to keep alive the memory of the injustices of National Socialist persecution, to assume the resulting responsibility in the present, and to actively shape the future. The Foundation's central purpose when established in 2000 was to pay humanitarian compensation to former forced laborers under the National Socialist regime - a milestone in Germany's efforts to come to terms with the past. Nowadays, within the fields of activity Education and Action, the Foundation funds projects and activities that support the survivors of National Socialist persecution, international understanding and the strengthening of human rights. For more information, please visit https://www.stiftung-evz.de/en/.